Science is what is, which requires nor benefits from belief. Adding a belief layer is interpreting, exploitable, and leads to believing untrue things as true (Science).
Reduced Logical Form: I believe what is (true) = Oxymoron
Oxymoron: A rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined
Explainer: It is impossible to believe what is true.
—Highly Related—
Question: 1 - Is it true or false?
Hint: Is/must/can the number/digit/integer 1 (one) be boolean in [all] cases? What are the conditions in which 1 is false?
Test from OCaml:
if 1 then true else false;;
Theorem Pseudocode: if (1 = true) && (2 = 1 + 1) && (2 = true && true) then [true +& true +& …] = true else nothing else matters
Note my recursive application to all other numbers/physics and inference that if 1 is not true, nothing is true
Postulation: All positive integers are true
I don’t really know what this post is on about, but science is not truth. It’s a system of prediction. The closest you can get to “truth” would be observation and data. Science is the process of interpreting these facts to better understand what things will look like in the future. It is obvious that science is not ‘true’, because by its nature it requires change over time as our models of the world improve.
Let me also affirm in this way, maybe this will help. What does the Scientific Method produce? It’s produces evidence/conclusions and theories. Moreso, it produces what we know as Science.
Another perspective. If Science does not produce truth? What is it good for? What does then produce Truth we can participate in and acknowledge?
If you want, you can view science as a system of organization. A way of making sense of facts. If I give you a file of seemingly random ones and zeroes, it is useless. If I give you an algorithm to decode those ones and zeroes into a message, that has utility. However, somebody else could produce an algorithm to decode those same ones and zeroes into an entirely different message. So, which algorithm is correct? Neither.
But say I give you another file, and Algorithm B doesn’t produce anything useful for this message, so now Algorithm A is more useful. But I also provide a new Algorithm C which also finds messages in both files. Now which is more correct, A or C? And on and on. We continue to refine our models of the data, and we hope that those models will have predictive utility until proven otherwise, but it is always possible (in fact, almost guaranteed) that there is a model of the universe that is more accurate than the one we have.
Consider the utility of a map. A map is an obviously useful thing, but it is also incomplete. A perfect map, a “true” map, would perfectly reproduce every single minute detail of the thing it is mapping. But to do so, it would need to be built at the same scale as the thing it is mapping, which would be far too cumbersome to actually use as, you know, a map. So, we abstract details to identify patterns to maximize utility. Science, likewise, is a tool of prediction, which is useful, but is also not true, because our model of the universe can never be complete.
Yet another.
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
― Max Planck, Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers
If all it takes to make science truth is to provide quotes of famous people calling it truth, then religion is probably truth a thousand times over.
A lot of the arguments and evidence you bring to the table are circular and only true from the reference point of whatever internal logic you’ve decided to assemble for yourself. Does this mean you’re surrounded by Chinese shills? Probably not, but that is also apparently the truth you’ve decided to believe in, evidence be damned.
What people are trying to make you see is that epistemologically, absolute truth is a ridiculous bar that, if you set as the hurdle for science to meet, is only going to disappoint you time and again.
Scientific knowledge does not have any special status or truth value conferred on it beyond the very educated guesswork of scientists and the time and effort and money that goes into verification. It’s an endeavour that relies entirely on empiricism and the flaws that come with having limited human perceptions.
Does this mean that science is exactly the same as religion when it comes to reliability? Of course not, because the things that you choose to believe in when you believe in science are different, more accurate and reproducible.
To claim that science has some ineffable attribute that puts it above any other belief, on the other hand, is discounting and discrediting the effort and very nature of scientific knowledge, and ascribing to it the kind of mystic quality that is exactly what makes religious knowledge so ridiculous.
I can appreciate this perspective, but what you’re referring to is the Scientific Method. Science is the field of the sum of all knowledge, Science as it is used, “settled”, meaned, thought, correctly, by most is, “what is”.
This is really strange in two ways.
One, you’re not describing science but existence. Science is nothing if not a framework of knowledge based on the scientific method. To somehow come up with a definition of science that separates it from the scientific method actually removes all qualities of knowledge from science (do you think religious people also don’t define their knowledge as “what is”?) On the whole, basing your definition of “Science” as how laymen define science seems to be a strange way to try to make a supposedly mathematical argument - from imprecision and abstraction?
Two, to conflate Science with existence essentially is concocting a truism - like when someone asks you to solve for x you’ve chosen to define x as whatever you want then solve it. Science as the sum of empirical human knowledge is an approximation of x, and as a mathematician I’m sure you understand the significance of how an approximation of something is a world apart from the thing itself. You cannot say that science is truth, therefore science is true - that is a pointless statement that completely drops all the reasons why science is more truthful than religious knowledge or any other form of knowledge.
Science is not Truth as Truth is an absolute that cannot be changed.
Science is our least wrong explanation of the universe based on the observational data we have obtained.
When we obtain data that does not fit the current explanation, the explanation must be altered to take into account the new data.
I would say in programmer terms that would be a less strict evaluation of Science. Science strives for Truth through experimentation and peer proofing, but it’s purpose is the seeking of truth. So purpose and now state. I would also say if “the state of Science” is least wrong, then we would be no where as advanced as we are. The Scientific Method is about proving the most right.
Science has uncovered an incredible amount of truths and we use those truths everywhere around us, Chemistry is a good example. If the rules of chemistry weren’t true and correct, then the formulas would fail.
“If the story of Adam and Eve wasn’t true and correct, then there wouldn’t be any humans.”
You have a very binary understanding of what is necessary for something to be true that is almost dogmatic.
The rules of chemistry need not be true and correct for formulas to succeed. People were doing correct things for the wrong reasons, even scientifically, for centuries, if not millennia. Think about things like surgeons not washing hands, inefficient gunpowder, bloodletting, or the attempts at a unified theory of Physics - we know that not everything is correct, yet the formulas don’t fail at small enough scales/slow enough scales/within certain observational parameters.
You’re right that science aims for truth, but that doesn’t mean it can attain anything more than our closest approximation of the truth (limited by human perspectives and resources). We believe in it because it is what works, for now. And the beauty of this is that if one day some incontrovertible proof for a higher being does come up, we will recalibrate all our theories to account for it (presumably after very, very stringent checks.)
Now if your whole point is Science has done very many good things all around us, that is 100% true! But that says nothing about the truth value of Science, beyond that there is a lot of evidence of it working that one time (which is not what you seem to be claiming when you say it exists regardless of belief).
Are we trying to add unnecessary mysticism to conveniently useful things? 0 is just as truthy in reality as 1 or any other value in any imaginable base. That we typically assign zero to be false in most programming languages and assign one or all positive integers or all positive numbers or all numbers or all non-zero values including NaN to be true is irrelevant, and doesn’t help illuminate anything. I’m either misunderstanding this post completely, or this is just a bunch of pseudoscientific horse manure.
Since no mysticism was used, but logical proofs and pseudocode, then meandering to 0 (funny double meaning there), I’m gonna go with you misunderstanding it completely.
This is just being pedantic and insufferable. Everyone knows what is meant when we say we “believe in science”. Science cannot be insulted by people believing in it. The belief part exists in the human brain and understanding. The belief part is in trusting teachers and authorities on science and math. Science itself is not impacted by the belief or lack thereof. But the human is. Posts like this just make you look like an obtuse robot who thinks a MENSA membership is very cool.
It’s such a weird mix between r/im14andthisisdeep and “I just finished my first logic course and think I am the arbiter of logic”
I hope OP is young and is learning that the harder he tries to look ‘brilliant and impressive’ with this kind of stuff, the more it’s going to backfire. If OP not young, they should probably seek psychological counseling.
While being the very thing you accuse me of, pedantic and insufferable, the often used Phrase is demonstrably wrong and is used in a way so as to be coercive. Your mind wandering rant including teachers and authorities in Science is laughable and gives you away.
I have no idea what you’re trying to say here. You’d need to define terms better at the very least. What do you mean by true, what do you mean by believe etc.
As to the psuedo code, as far as I know, the boolean equivalence to 1 in many programming languages is just a convenience and not some law of nature or core basis of philosophy.
The terms belief and true seem to be self-evident and I’m trying to frame this to spur brainstorming about why they aren’t congrous. Belief usually goes along with Religion, as in, there is small/little proof, but one may chose to believe it or not. Where true I could say is impervious to belief. It exists whether you believe in it or not.
Stated another way, 1 + 1 = 2 is true. Is there anything there to believe or not believe? I’m breaking that down into just 1.
Belief is just what you personally think is true, there is no universal concept of true, even things that the majority of people believe to be true are not necessarily universally agreed upon. Even something as basic as 1 + 1 == 2 might not be believed by some people. There is no accepted universal arbiter of truth. When people say they believe in science they mean that they recognize the scientific process as the best way we have found to determine what is true in our reality.
Take as an example that the Earth is an approximate sphere. Most people agree that this is true and therefore believe this. But there also exist people who do not believe this, that argue it is not true. They do not believe it. What is true is not agreed upon. These people have a fundamentally different perception of reality. Those that believe in science trust in the systems and methods of the scientific process and therefore when such systems tell us that the Earth is in fact a slightly flattened spheroid we accept that as a truth. That is what it means to believe in science.
Even something as basic as 1 + 1 == 2 might not be believed by some people.
There are plenty of cases where 1 + 1 == 0 , it’s not about just some people.
We can take your axiom, 1+1 = 2, and break it down into where fundamentally one of your biggest misunderstandings is.
We came up with the equivalence of 1+1=2, and deemed it true. Someone else in this comment section already brought up the idea of axioms, and while 1+1=2 is a theorem rather than an axiom, it is built on axioms that have been defined as fact for the rest of the framework to stand.
Science (and Math) is a purely anthropic system or framework. 1+1=2 isn’t a universal constant if we look at the fusion of two Hydrogen atoms into one Helium atom (with extra energy being released!) The very idea of what 1 is can change depending on your reference point and may not stay the same between observers. While 1+1 may stay the same in the world of pure Mathematics (and a very robust world it is we have created!) it is much harder to apply them to real life (does this make Mathematics “true-er” than reality?)
The comments are full of drivel, but I’ll pick this one to respond to as you sound educated and able to re-formulate concepts but lack open-mindedness and novel application of concepts. Plus, your response is full of institutional verbiage, first level thinking, which sounds great to the uneducated and low IQ posters, but doesn’t even pass the first test so it easy to disassemble.
1 + 1 = 2 isn’t an axiom, it’s math, equality, and true. This is exactly what the perspective point I was trying to make! Truth itself cannot be axiomatic! This is so self-evident it is hard to comprehend how your education can lead you to one of the largest fundamental misunderstands in Science, but I guess that is not surprising. I mean, your post is a testament to misunderstanding reality, an reference to be studied in the future of post-Idiocracy. It in fact provides a broader understanding of post comments, Lemmy, and social media in general.
My definition as I understood it before looking it up is an axiom is a logical statement true on it’s face that serves as foundation for another step. Let us look at the some definitions for Axiom.
Tutors An axiom is a basic statement assumed to be true and requiring no proof of its truthfulness. It is a fundamental underpinning for a set of logical statements. Not everything counts as an axiom. It must be simple, make a useful statement about an undefined term, evidently true with a minimum of thought, and contribute to an axiomatic system (not be a random construct).
Mathigon One interesting question is where to start from. How do you prove the first theorem, if you don’t know anything yet? Unfortunately you can’t prove something using nothing. You need at least a few building blocks to start with, and these are called Axioms.
Wikipedia An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word ἀξίωμα (axíōma), meaning ‘that which is thought worthy or fit’ or ‘that which commends itself as evident’.[1][2]
Wolfram An axiom is a proposition regarded as self-evidently true without proof. The word “axiom” is a slightly archaic synonym for postulate. Compare conjecture or hypothesis, both of which connote apparently true but not self-evident statements.
You may use first level thinking about Propositions so to avoid more non-sense here is an another explainer.
Let me hammer it home again, the principle of my argument, to give you repeated attempts to understand and forego your ego 1 + 1 = 2 cannot be a proposition, an axiom, and proof, a logical statement that evaluates to true, it is already true and by definitions above it is:
- Defined
- Does not serve to prove a logical statement
- Does not serve as further reasoning.
Saying 1 + 1 = 2 serves as foundation for further deductive reasoning is like saying my car accelerates because of motion or momentum which is generic, imprecise, not a proof, and worthless. Movement is already motion. Your car accelerates because of a gas engine. Again, please think deeply about this, no shallow thoughts. What I’m trying to do is go beyond and surpass common knowledge, to push the envelope further than before using the scientific method to challenge old constructs. I’m free to be shown wrong or corrected, but no one has even come close! What we are really talking about here is addition!
I would challenge any Mathematician anywhere and I meant to. 1 + 1 = 2 is what is, a truth, true, fundamental building block of all things and requires no reasoning. If a toddler picks up another stick, it knows it has two whether it can convey that thought-form in a way we understand it or not. Saying 1 + 1 = 2 is Axiomatic is like saying Oxygen is an axiom or axiomatic. To further build the periodic table. No, Oxygen just is, a fundamental piece of reality which is also true! Maybe someone will understand in the future.
My aim was to put this comment up for posterity as wasting more time here is fruitless so don’t take it personally really, I just used your most educated and almost right post as an example of how that if intellectual debate is to be sought, it certainly isn’t on Lemmy which is I would say mediocre at best, and in fact, one is surely to get misinformed, ugly responses.
I will use all the debate that went on in my head in trying to combat this circus into a proper Academia.edu Paper. Really, my whole point was the second part of my post where I thought it was quite clear the logical conclusion to which would be that programming lanaguages need to be re-engineered! No one even put that together that I saw!
I skipped all the mean comments.
It’s unfortunate that you’ve chosen to focus on a semantic nitpick as the only thing to reply to rather than all the other more interesting talking points.
It’s also unfortunate that you’ve chosen to condescend throughout all the posts you’ve written, which really makes me want to not rely to you.
That said, you’ve already shown a brutal contradiction:
Wikipedia:
‘to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments’Tutors:
‘contribute to an axiomatic system’Wolfram:
‘a proposition regarded as self-evidently true without proof. The word “axiom” is a slightly archaic synonym for postulate.’What these definitions all say that I think you’re wilfully choosing to ignore (or just not reading carefully enough) is that these are all assumptions meant to make a system internally logical.
It’s also amazing how you can say
‘Saying 1 + 1 = 2 serves as foundation for further deductive reasoning […] is generic, imprecise, and worthless’
when that is literally what half of your definitions also say.
‘Saying 1 + 1 = 2 is Axiomatic is like saying Oxygen is an axiom or axiomatic. To further build the periodic table. No, Oxygen just is, a fundamental piece of reality which is also true!’
You’re still not getting it, which means you’re not reading anything I’ve said at all about human-centric perception (which is a shame given how much time I’ve had to spend trying to parse your poor semantics.)
There’s a difference between the element and atoms of Oxygen that do exist in our world and the name and observed properties of Oxygen that we have derived and given to Oxygen. The strange thing is that I think while everyone else agrees that the testing, observing, and ascribing of properties to something is science, you think that the existence of oxygen itself is science (and therefore science is truth?)
To bring it back to your original equivalences, 1 is true in most languages and systems because along the way, humans decided to use 1 to notate a truth value. If we had wanted (and some systems do), 0 could have been used as the truth value, or even a letter. We’ve then decided to build entire lines of logic from that number, and obviously from within the observational parameters of this framework, 1 must be true for any of our observations to be internally consistent. But two things:
- These are our observations, not reality per se.
- 1 is still an abstraction. Is the concept behind 1 an absolute truth? For all we know 0.99 (recurring) is a much more accurate abstraction for the 1s of the universe. 1 is our human attempt to bring some order to a confusing world.
Fundamentally your dogmatic clinging to axioms as somehow underpinning some universal truth when they are meant to be convenient frameworks to build upon shows a very shallow understanding of the building blocks with which humans have built our understanding of the world. I highly recommend you take the scientific method to heart and try posting these “deep” thoughts in other places to see if anyone else agrees that they’re deep. If they don’t, I invite you to revise your hypothesis and reassess whether what’s “true” to you really is true to the mathematicians and scientists of the world.
Edit: Just want to add that I won’t be replying to you anymore as it’s taking a lot of more time and the worse thing is I don’t think you’re even trying to understand what others have to say despite your talk about “no shallow thinking” (lol). There’s no point in talking to a brick wall, especially a condescending one, and I’m sure we both have better things to do with our lives.
I’m getting serious Time Cube vibes from this post.
Oh look, trolling that conflates my post with conspiracy theory where none is present. Convienent in building a false narrative and reputation harm.
If you run into an asshole, you just had bad luck. If everyone you run into is an asshole, the problem is you.
Likely but not always. Say (exploiting the trends a bit) if you are a black person and everybody you run into is an asshole and also white and you live somewhere in 18xx, then the problem is likely not you.
What is the fediverse version of /r/Im14AndThisIsDeep?
Science doesnt have a believe? Wait until you find out about axioms.
Burying my post in misinformed, spiteful, authoritative comments and votes. This is such a well-formed and intelligent unique thought-form and most importantly, not News. I was hoping for enlightened responses, even disagreeable ones. That way a productive discussion could be had!
Inside the British Army’s secret information warfare machine They are soldiers, but the 77th Brigade edit videos, record podcasts and write viral posts. Welcome to the age of information warfare
etc, etc.
This is such a well-formed and intelligent unique thought-form and most importantly, not News.
Wow. it is rare you see such a severe case of head-up-my-own-assitis in a single sentence. Seriously. Then you come in here acting like your farts don’t stink and look down on everyone who does reply and disagrees with you.
Double Perspective: 1 is the truest darn thing I can conceive of. In fact, if we can’t count on 1 being true, we can count on anything.
In Unix shell scripts 1 is false, so there’s that
