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TheOtherDave comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong
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The confusion here has nothing to do with the meaning of "false," or the distinction between accuracy and precision.
If I'm using a known 50-g weight to calibrate a scale, and I look at the scale reading (which says "51g"), and thereby conclude that the scale is off by 1g, I don't think you're at all justified in concluding that I've observed that the weight is 51g.
I mean, I agree that if I had made such an observation, it would be a mistaken observation.
But I don't agree that I made any such observation in the first place. For example, if you asked me after weighing the weight "What is the mass of the weight?" I would most likely answer "50g," because being able to say that with confidence is the whole point of using standard-mass callibration weights in the first place.
I am confused. In your example what are you saying your observation is, and do you consider it true or false? Also, what do you consider "known" before the observation?
I observe that the reading on the scale is "51g," as I said in the first place.
Yes. True.
All kinds of things. In the case with a standard 50g callibration weight, that includes the mass of the weight.
This is getting stuck in the morass of trying to distinguish between observations and interpretations. I don't particularly want to discuss the philosophy of qualia.
My point is much simpler. It's quite common for data points which everyone calls "observations" to be false. Trying to fix that problem is called cleaning the data and can be a huge hassle. In practical terms, if you get a database of observations you cannot assume that all of them are true.
I certainly agree that such data points can be false.
When you chose to disagree with khafra's claim I thought you were making an actual counterassertion, rather than simply challenging their use of the label "observation" in an indirect way.
My apologies, and I'm happy to drop it here.