h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

PC: <<BtM:

So you make a statement which is unjustified, but *I* have to disprove it if you are to admit you're wrong. What strange logic your 'rational' beliefs follow.>>

It's a perfectly logical "belief" whereby one posits a hypothesis, and then attempts to invalidate it. You may have heard of it by its popular name, "the scientific method." I understand some rather valuable information has come about through that method.

I'd be interested to know which method you follow, and which useful information has come about through that process.

<>

Here we go. This assertion that we have no access to objective reality is the underlying assumption behind everything you've said on this subject to date. This would be your hypothesis, and it would be very easy for me to turn this around upon you and say, "Prove it," just as you have done. However, your hypothesis is a negative (just as mine above is), and it is impossible to prove a negative. However, it is possible to invalidate a negative if you can just prove a single positive.


I bring you back to... oh, I don't know, any analogy I've already used will do. Let's go back to the stick or snake analogy. You can believe it's a snake as hard as you like, but if objective reality determines it's a stick, then it's a stick. You can believe that you've been bitten, and if you believe hard enough you might even thrash around in imagined throes of agony until you knock yourself out. But you will utterly fail to die of blood poisoning. You will wake up and be forced to face the embarassment of others who, using their access to objective reality, have determined that you have only managed to scratch yourself with a stick.

Or a real life example... just a couple weeks ago I was told that one of our system programmers was having login problems. He had changed his password on the production system on the old server, and when he tried to use it on the test partition we were running on the new server we were preparing to migrate to, the new password didn't work. These two partitions used to co-exist on the same server, and have shared the same security database for years. I poked around and verified that both images were, indeed, pointing to the exact same security database on the exact same volume in a shared disk environment. It was absolutely impossible to have different passwords for the two different partitions.

But no matter what I believed, the objective reality of the situation refused to budge. And then I learned about a function called the virtual lookaside facility, and objective reality made perfect sense.

There's a couple of examples which demonstrate the affirmative hypothesis that objective reality is accessible... thereby invalidating your negative hypothesis. If you want more

This is what you get for working in Notepad and copying and pasting. It appears that, although I truly believed I had selected all of the text, objective reality has foiled me again. The last sentence should read: If you want more examples, I suggest you watch an episode of Mythbusters.

P-C:

Ed:

Because we have no agreed common standard of comparison. Potholer might expect us to use something compatible with *his* opinion of what objective reality is; you might expect something a little different; I might expect something even more different. Which of us is right? ... I suppose we could compare all of our expectations with objective reality? Oh. It's just a big circle. Without *propoer* objectivity, we have no objectivity at all. Not even a close approach.

As several have observed, we get by in everyday life without all this. In these circumstances, 'fairly sure' is almost always good enough, and (again in everyday life), people *very rarely* consider such things as whether God exists.. The details only start to matter when you have a significant decision to make, and hope to make it authoritatively enough to be able to say "I am right and you are wrong".

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Earlier I suggested that P-C might be distinguishing between 'True enough for practical purposes' and a notional 'Absolute Truth'.

Can I suggest that the confusion is between Reality and Knowledge. P-C is hunting a snark chased by many. 'Ah but how can we...like...you know...completely *understand*?'

We can't, of course. Big universe, small brains. But we can understand *enough*. (From multiple perspectives, even - but all of them firmly empirical).

>>Ed:

P-C:
>>Because we have no agreed common standard of comparison. Potholer might expect us to use something compatible with *his* opinion of what objective reality is; you might expect something a little different; I might expect something even more different. Which of us is right?

I refer you to m'learned Mugwump. Have you been bitten by a snake or not? When you turn up in A&E, should they give you an anti-venom or an anti-psychotic?

Granted, though, there can be differences of opinion...but these are testable, surely? That's what science is about. In the wider, more multivariate world (eg politics, religion) we should hold people to similar standards: 'What is your evidence that your interpretation is better than mine?'

Aaahhhh, but this maybe all in my head, this may be all a dream and you lot aren't real, ooooh *waves hands about*. Go on, disprove it.

P-C is demanding absolutes where there are none. Nothing else other than the *true* fundamental nature of the universe is good enough. The rest of us realise this and attempt to get on with discussion, but are repeatedly dragged back by worthless pedantry.

Ok, P-C, we cannot prove there is objective reality. Got it. It's an assumption that there is one. Got it. It's an assumption the entire planet lives with every day with good results. If you're just trying to make a point, point made.

Ste

Not a good example, I don't think. In this case, we don't need to be objective. We do need something approximating it, but - I think we all agree - we already have that. Either we have a good approximate perception of reailty, or we have a model that - even if it differs hugely from the true nature of reality - works similarly enough for our purposes.



Why would I want to do this? Like you, I would try to see if it was a snake or a stick. If I wasn't sure, I might approach more closely, to get a better view, or I might head off in the opposite direction anyway, just to be sure.

Questions such as whether or not God exists are not in this league. They are more complicated in many different ways. And we don't have access to a universally accepted stadard ('objectivity') to resolve our differences.



Next time, press Ctrl-A or click on edit/select all, and you'll be fine!

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

No, P-C is simply recognising that there are no absolutes, in a situation where an absolute standard is being recommended for use, but we have no access to it.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

Throughout these discussions I have yet to see anyone claiming personal omniscience.

When someone says 'such-and-such is so,' and offers details, and reasonable evidence, we generally tend to accept the thing as fact -- unless and until other evidence contradicts the theory.

When a person says, 'god exists,' there is really no way of arguing to the contrary, simply because in this case the word 'god' is undefined.
Similarly, when a person says, 'god does not exist,' they may come across as arrogant/extreme/dogmatic, but no more so than that of the person making undefined claims regarding existence of a supernatural agency.

Perhaps the person who says, 'god exists,' is really making a shorthand statement of their personal belief, which they may or may not have arrived at through their own enquiry.
The person who refutes the statement may also be using shorthand for, 'I see no evidence of such a thing, please provide more detail.'
The latter would describe my position fairly well.

In either case, in the absence of descriptive detail, such argument is futile, as is a discussion about absolute vs practical knowledge, etc.

>>"Because we have no agreed common standard of comparison. Potholer might expect us to use something compatible with *his* opinion of what objective reality is; you might expect something a little different; I might expect something even more different. Which of us is right? ... I suppose we could compare all of our expectations with objective reality? ok Oh. winkeye It's just a big circle. Without *propoer* objectivity, we have no objectivity at all. Not even a close approach."

Well, my concept of 'objective reality' relies in part on the fact that what appear to me to be be other people appear to share similar ideas about what I think of as the real/natural world.

It seems a pretty bogus argument that without perfect objectivity, there is no such thing as objectivity. There clearly is a state called objectivity which many people aspire to approach in relevant circumstances, with a significant amount of agreement about what the word means and which features of an observation may make people more or less objective, and some chance of approaching the desired state closely at least some of the time.

One could argue that without *perfect* justice of *perfect* freedom, we don't have any justice or freedom, since there's an element of injustice or compulsion staining everything, but that kind of argument only really holds for people who define certain concepts as being all-or-nothing, which I'd suggest that most people *just don't do* in the case of objectivity/subjectivity.

To be able to show that a particular analysis isn't objective, it would seem to be the case that one could point to the things that make it subjective. If the only things that can be pointed to seem trivial to most people, most people would consider the approach to be Good Enough as far as objectivity goes.

The thing with objectivity is that it may well require some definition of assumptions, and may only produce a provisional result, yet it may still produce a result which is useful in the context of the assumptions. Even the definition of the assumptions may iteslf be a useful action.
It's certainly worth being wary of people *claiming* that a particular approach is objective, since people aren't always correct *or* unbiased, but in the case where objectivity is claimed, it should at least be possible to examine the methods that people have used, and the arguments behind them.

As an example, if we were to look at the belief that prayer heals people, performing a proper study, where people with all kinds of views on the question (including natural nit-pickers) agreed in advance on the methodology, and where many people were studied in a double-blind trial, the result would be likely to be not only more accurate, but more objective than simply asking one person what they thought.
Effectively, the result would be likely to be *closer to reality*.

Anyway, on the topic of evidence for any particular deity, we do seem to be basically agreed that a personal belief accepted purely on the basis of authority doesn't really count as evidence.

The person doing the believing is really nothing more than a receptacle for ideas that someone else had (and which the receiver hasn't actually checked).

If I read a book claiming to be a biography of an actual person I previously knew nothing of, and subsequently didn't gather any independent information about, my belief that the person [had] existed and done the claimed things would indicate nothing other than my reading of the book and taking it seriously.
To someone who already knew of the existence of the book, my belief would be exactly worthless as any kind of evidence for the existence of the person in question.
Even to someone who didn't know about the book, the only useful information they could glean from me would be the existence of the book, and maybe my thoughts on where it did or didn't make sense.

Continuing to lock horns with a bonobo...( I'll never learn)...

I never said that the 'established' religions were right, just showed that your statement was easily plopped on [can I still say 'plop' or has the auto-castigator got that one too?]. You must be slipping Ed.

"I kind of resent this one. I'm arguing for scepticism. Only accept evidence that you'd have to be wilfully perverse to ignore...with no place for faith or introspection or suspension of disbelief. It has to work for people (like me ) who won't 'open our eyes'. "

Resentment is good, I can work with resentment. After all it is an illogical and negative human emotion

You are not arguing for scepticism, you are arguing for ignoring anything that doesn't yet fit your narrow definition of evidence or requires you to get off the sofa an explore more thoroughly.

You are as bad as the Catholic church. If I say I have found some truth in my druidic path then you (and they) say I am unqualified. If I then say I have been actively pursuing this truth for over 30 years, educating myself as I go, studying widely, you both yawn and say my study is irrelevant and you will not consider my truth as it has no basis in the definition of truth you subscribe to.

Galileo was a brilliant man but he never stood a chance against the orthodoxy of an established culture. Only once the stranglehold of that orthodoxy was destroyed by the wars of the Age of Reason could his truth flourish.

This is now the position of men like me in the Age of Science. I say I have travelled in an Otherworld, spoken with beings that do not fit this physical reality (as defined by the Men of Science), developed personal abilities that also don't fit and I am a fool at best, dangerous at worst.

You don't want evidence, and you are unprepared to follow me into the woods and experience it yourself.

It is strange then that you will accept the reality of particles that have not yet been observed but that theoretical physicists can show should exist with maths, even though you may not have the mathematical skills to appreciate the proof.

Please define 'perverse' for me again?

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\

Galileo would have been sensible enough to seek evidence from somewhere other than inside of a Druid's head. Something he could point a telsecope at. Theoretical physicists pass their theories along to their chums at CERN who bash particles into one another and look at what comes out. Druids ask that we go with the flow and buy in to the groupthink.

It's quite obvious from looking at the numerous beliefs around, and the fervency and honesty with which many are held, that someone else's beliefs really aren't of much value on their own when it comes to trying to work out what (if anything) is Out There.

Even assuming someone is actually sane, it's quite possible for them to come to believe in things which are deliberate fabrications, so unless there's something more which someone can point to apart from their beliefs, they don't really have much to offer.

Someone may have seen spirits in the woods whilst in a particular state of mind, but if they can't show them to someone else, it's not really evidence. Only last autumn, *I* saw what appeared to be a lovely wood-spirit standing in the starlight on a campsite, but the next morning, looking back on the circumstances of the encounter, I realised it was highly likely to be just a tree that I'd seen, rather than anything else.

If someone believes they have acquired special powers, then it would seem likely that their best course of action to convince others would be to demonstrate those powers, rather than speak about them.

<< If I say I have found some truth in my druidic path then you (and they) say I am unqualified. If I then say I have been actively pursuing this truth for over 30 years, educating myself as I go, studying widely, you both yawn and say my study is irrelevant and you will not consider my truth as it has no basis in the definition of truth you subscribe to.>>

Jesus H, Math. You know why. All this learning you go on about changes the world how? You're debating with empiricists and you don't say 'Well here's how it affects the world outside my head'. You claim to have 'your truth', well if it's only inside your head why should anyone believe you? What you're claiming is no different to an argument from authority (yours, if you're wondering).

<>

Well, Potholer said it pretty well:
"If someone believes they have acquired special powers, then it would seem likely that their best course of action to convince others would be to demonstrate those powers, rather than speak about them."

Or at very least..show me some holiday snaps from your travels on the Otherworld.

Ste:

But what about carrying that point through, and abiding by the consequences? With such emotional resistance to the very concept, the temptation is to put it aside, one the basis that it may be true, but it has no effect on 'real life' does it? Well yes, it does. Very occasionally.

Our lack of access to 'objective reality' is analagous to the relativistic weirdness that happens when you approach the speed of light. Most of the time, for most purposes, it is not useful because its effects are insignificant. True and correct but insignificant. However, when you *do* approach the speed of light, relativistic corrections become essential.

Similarly, for everyday purposes we don't need to take account of our lack of objective perception. As above, it's insignificant. However, when we engage in 'high-velocity' discussions like this one, and someone suggests we use objective reality as a standard of comparison. *then* our lack becomes significant, and must be accounted for.

In this specific case: how can you use as a standard something to which you have no access? At this point you need to think carefully, and realise/accept that what you have is your opinion, your personal guess, of what objective reality is. And since that's what everyone else has as well, an attempt to use 'objective reality' as a standard for comparison won't and can't work. Our individual beliefs about what reality *is* differ too much.

When our lack of objective perception matters - not often - it matters a lot.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"

>>"However, when we engage in 'high-velocity' discussions like this one, and someone suggests we use objective reality as a standard of comparison. *then* our lack becomes significant, and must be accounted for."

Suggesting checking ideas against the Real World doesn't necessarily imply that the comparison is entirely objective, just that it is somewhat more objective than simply considering a person's ungrounded opinion as a useful guide to what exists in the Real World, rather than possibly just in that person's head.

Hands up, anyone who's *really* worried that objectivity, like justice, freedom, or many other ideals, is one that can only be approached, not actually completely attained?

>>When our lack of objective perception matters - not often - it matters a lot.

An example, please.

Ed:

From the same post you took the top quote from:



Was that not a good enough example? We're trying, AIUI, to weigh (religious or atheist) beliefs , and perhaps place them in order of merit, or something like that. A common and universally-accepted standard of comparison would be pretty handy. But sadly, 'objective reality' isn't it.

Pattern-chaser

"Who cares, wins"