How much confidence do you place in the scientific theory that ordinary matter is made of discrete units, or 'atoms', as opposed to being infinitely divisible?
More than 50%? 90%? 99%? 99.9%? 99.99%? 99.999%? More? If so, how much more? (If describing your answer in percentages is cumbersome, then feel free to use the logarithmic scale of decibans, where 10 decibans corresponds to 90% confidence, 20 to 99%, 30 to 99.9%, etc.)
This question freely acknowledges that there are aspects of physics which the atomic theory does not directly cover, such as conditions of extremely high energy. This question is primarily concerned with that portion of physics in which the atomic theory makes testable predictions.
This question also freely acknowledges that its current phrasing and presentation may not be the best possible to elicit answers from the LessWrong community, and will be happy to accept suggestions for improvement.
Edit: By 'atomic theory', this question refers to the century-plus-old theory. A reasonably accurate rewording is: "Do you believe 'H2O' is a meaningful description of water?".
Well, that's a good point. I arrived at the above figure by starting with the base rate of schizophrenia and updating based on its frequency among people who are homeless or otherwise immiserated, etc., as versus the general population. At the very least, it seems that having significant hallucinations seems to usually go along with a lot more being shouted at than I experience. Perhaps it's just that I'm well-off financially and people are likely to humor my delusions ....
I wouldn't pick schizophrenia as a base-rate.
As far as I know, schizophrenics are usually aware of their unusual mental/epistemological status, so your thinking yourself normal (as I assume you do) screens off schizophrenia; another issue with schizophrenia is that I've read that schizophrenic hallucination are almost always confined to one modality - you hear someone behind you but if you look you see nothing, I imagine is how it works - so here too you would become aware of glitches or inconsistencies in your senses.
What you want is the situation where y... (read more)