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ChristianKl comments on Rationality Quotes May 2014 - Less Wrong
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Yes, that roughly what I mean. However there might be no way for you to know what they mean if you lack certain experiences.
If a New Agey person speaks about how the observer effect in Quantum physics means X, his problem is that he doesn't have any idea what "observer" means for a physicist. Actually getting the person to understand what "observer" means to a physicist isn't something that you accomplish in an hour if the person has a total lack of physics background. .
The same is true in reverse. It's not straightforward for the physicist to understand what the New Agey person means. Understanding people with a very different mindset then you is hard.
You seem to be saying two things here:
This entails that it is possible to simply explain what you mean, even across very large inferential gaps.
Yet here you seem to entertain the idea that it's sometimes impossible to explain what you mean, because a certain special experience is necessary.
I endorse the first of these two points, and I'm extremely skeptical about the second. It also seems to me that physicists tend to hold to the first, and new agers tend to hold to the second, and that this constitutes much of the difference in their epistemic virtue.
I said impossible in an hour not impossible in general. It simple might take a few years. There a scene in Neuromancer where at the end one protagonist asks the AI why another acted the way they did. The first answer is: It's unexplainable. Then the answer is, it's not really unexplainable but would take 37 years to explain. (my memory on the exact number might not be accurate)
On the other hand the idea that teaching new phenomenological primitives is extremely hard. It takes more than an hour to teach a child that objects don't fall because they are heavy but because of gravity. Yes, you might get some token agreement but when you ask questions the person still thinks that a heavy object ought to fall faster than a light one because they haven't really understand the concept on a deep level. In physics education it's called teaching phenomenological primitives.
You can't explain a blind man what red looks like. There are discussions that are about qualia.
"Because of gravity" isn't any better an explanation than "because they are heavy". Why does "gravity" accelerate all masses the same? Really thinking about that leads to general relativity, so it actually takes many years to explain why things fall, and it can't be done without going through calculus, topology, and differential geometry.
Cf. Feynman on explanations (07:10–09:05).
Just being able to recite "because of gravity" is not enough for many purposes. I myself did well in physics at school and finished best in class in it but I haven't studied any physics since then and I'm well aware that I don't understand advanced physics.
It's not perfect but it is better. Airplanes fly well based on Newtonian physics.
No, they think that a heavy object ought to fall faster than a light one because that's how it actually works for most familiar objects falling through air.
If you've just been telling without demonstrating, this is pure reliance on authority.
(Or taking a hypothetical seriously.)
An important factor is just understanding the details of how everything supposedly fits together. Even if you don't know from observation that it's the way things work in our world, there is evidence in seeing a coherent theory, as opposed to contradictory lies and confusion. Inventing a robust description of a different world is hard, more likely it's just truth about ours.
Empty water bottles don't exactly fall faster than full water bottles.
But my point isn't about whether you rely or authority or don't but on how people actually make decisions. There literature on phenomenological primitives in physics.
The one time we tested the theory of gravity experimentally in school I did not get numbers that the Newtonian formula predicted. At the same time I don't think those formula are wrong. I believe them because smart people tell me that they are true and I don't care enough about physics to investigate the matter further.
Through air full water bottles do fall faster than empty ones.
LOL. "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"
A bit maybe but I think they should have roughly the same speed. How much faster do you think they would fall?
Sometimes you have to make hard choices...
There was a time were I thought it was about picking sides and being for empiricism or against it. I'm well past that point. There are times when believing the authority is simply the right choice.
If the fall is sufficiently long, they reach different terminal velocities, which are proportional to the square root of their masses.
According to the Teh Interwebz, an average 0.5 litre empty plastic bottle weights about 13 g. A full bottle weights 513 g. Therefore, at terminal velocity it falls about 6.3 times faster.
What does sufficiently long mean in practice?
It depends on the drag coefficient and forward projected surface area of the bottle. My mildly informed guess is that it would take between 20 and 30 seconds.
EDIT:
Actually, I've just tried dropping 1.5 litre bottles from an height of about 1.8 m. Even if the fall lasts perhaps one second, the empty bottle starts to tumble much more than the full one, and hits the ground a noticeably later.
In epistemic matters? I don't think so.
Information isn't free and there are many cases where gathering more information is too expensive and who have to go with the best authority that's available.
On the other hand it's worthwhile to be conscious of the decision that one makes in that regard. Most people follow authorities for all the wrong reasons.