TheAncientGeek comments on Dark Side Epistemology - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 17 October 2008 11:55PM

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Comment author: Caledonian2 18 October 2008 01:47:00PM 1 point [-]

Too restrictive. Science is not synonymous with the hypothetico-deductive method, and nor is there any sort of thing called the "scientific method" from which scientists draw their authority on a subject. Neither is it a historically accurate description of how science has done its work. Read up on Feyerabend.

Science is inherently structureless and chaotic. It's whatever works.

See, now there's a prime example of corrupted reasoning right there. Science is carefully structured chaos, ordered according to certain fundamental principles. Meeting those principles is what we mean when we talk about something 'working'.

The recognition of what 'working' is, and the tools that have been found useful in reaching that state, is what constitutes the scientific method.

Scientists do not concern themselves with what philosophers say about science -- it is my experience that they are actively contemptuous of such. Yet science goes on. Strange, isn't it? It's almost as though the philosophers didn't know what they were talking about.

(Additional: the central metaphor of this discussion is flawed - the Light and Dark sides define and require each other; contrastingly, both Jedi and Sith are corruptions and failures to properly represent the two sides of the Force. Accept one, and you reject the truth of things.)

Comment author: TheAncientGeek 03 September 2014 05:30:19PM 0 points [-]

Scientists do not concern themselves with what philosophers say about science -- it is my experience that they are actively contemptuous of such.

These comments are largely true

Yet science goes on. Strange, isn't it? It's almost as though the philosophers didn't know what they were talking about.

These comments don't follow from the above. Yes,scientists dont need philosophers to tell them how to science, which they can do on the riding-a-bike basis. That doesn't mean philosophers are wrong. Birds don't need scientists to tell them how to fly..doesn't mean the scientists are wrong.