rv77ax comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong

25 Post author: orthonormal 26 December 2011 10:57PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (1430)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: rv77ax 03 January 2012 06:43:51PM *  0 points [-]

So you do accept scientific evidence, then- simple (approximate) models that explain well-verified patterns should be taken as practically true, until their limits are found. Right?

Yes and no, depends on the context. In reality, some of patterns can be taken as practically true and some of it is not.

As an example, If I drop something from top of building, it's always go down to the ground; this pattern is always reproducible with the same result by all peoples who can test it. But, if I drink hot water when I'm sick and I get healthy in the next morning, that would become biased, because it's not always reproducible with the same result.

I think, it's only a matter of how someone defined the value for "well-verified" and "limit" until it become true for himself.

Comment author: orthonormal 03 January 2012 09:42:38PM 0 points [-]

So you're talking about a quantitative difference rather than a qualitative one- we should be far more skeptical about our generalizations than we're inclined to be. A good point in this community, but phrasing it as "no truth" probably communicates the wrong concept.