evgenit comments on Epistemic security: example from experimental physics - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Stabilizer 17 February 2012 12:48AM

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Comment author: evgenit 17 February 2012 11:30:44AM 0 points [-]

So, it’s like if you use a map of the territory to build a road from A to B, and then you later realize that the map that you used to build the road was wrong. But the road still takes you from from A to B! So it doesn’t matter if you built it with the wrong map, it still works.

I think this summary omits a key point: How we know that the road still takes us from A to B? As far as I can tell, the answer is "by experiment" --- we know from repeated use how the instruments behave, and therefore it doesn't matter what our map of the world was when we initially built them. It could, of course, be that they are off --- but we know (by experiment) their precision, and so we can use that to check precision on other things.

What do you think?

Comment author: Stabilizer 17 February 2012 09:15:19PM 0 points [-]

I completely agree. I was trying to make the point that the instruments are theory-free.