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Author Topic: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof  (Read 11808 times)

TempAcc

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #75 on: September 21, 2015, 08:42:20 am »

As I'm too late for the discussion, I'll just express my general principles, that I follow in this regard:

1-Presumption of good faith, until proven otherwise: This basically means that you should, generally, trust people in regards to what they say, if they don't give you any reasons to not trust them in general on in regards to a particular thing. This means that you should trust most people, unless they have shown to be untrustworthy in the past, or you have proof that they're lying;

2-Every statement has relative value: This means that, while you should generally believe in what most people say, it also means that it doesn't necessarily mean that a certain person is telling the truth. A person can lie about something without knowing they're lying. so their statement can be false, altough they may believe it to be true.  This means you should always try to research and find other information that can confirm or refute what a person has said;

3-The burden of proof lies on whoever makes the statement: This basically means that, under normal conditions, a person who has made a statement must provide some proof of it being true, if questioned by another. This is common courtesy, and anyone who does not provide some proof of what they're saying should be regarded as unthrustworthy in regards to his/her statement. Of course, some arguments are beyond proof, such as matters concerning faith or ideological/political opinions, or because the person making the statement simply does not have the means of providing proof, altough such proof may be provided by third party with the power to do so, from which said person can extract the proof needed (a common example of this are scientific research involving experimental data).
Of course, if someone questions a statement, then that person must provide proof, as said person is making a statement when he/she questions another, and the burden of proof lies on whoever makes a statement.

4-Some arguments are beyond proof, for a reason or another: This applies to most religious matters, one cannot say a an argument regarding religion is true or false, simply because these things go beyond our means of verifying the statement. The quintessential example of this are the statements "God exists" and its negation "God does not exist", as both are beyond any means of verification. Not all religion related arguments are beyond proof, whoever, such as those involving historical facts and that aren't constructed as parables or myths, or facts about nature that our current level of scientific development can fully verify. This also applies to what many people consider "scientific fact", but are in fact incomplete truths still being verified. These can be considered to be true, for the time being, for the purpose of research. A good example of this are statements regarding the laws of physics, which are being contested and reviewed constantly, specially in regards to astronomical matters.
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i2amroy

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #76 on: September 21, 2015, 04:01:52 pm »

4-Some arguments are beyond proof, for a reason or another: This applies to most religious matters, one cannot say a an argument regarding religion is true or false, simply because these things go beyond our means of verifying the statement. The quintessential example of this are the statements "God exists" and its negation "God does not exist", as both are beyond any means of verification. Not all religion related arguments are beyond proof, whoever, such as those involving historical facts and that aren't constructed as parables or myths, or facts about nature that our current level of scientific development can fully verify. This also applies to what many people consider "scientific fact", but are in fact incomplete truths still being verified. These can be considered to be true, for the time being, for the purpose of research. A good example of this are statements regarding the laws of physics, which are being contested and reviewed constantly, specially in regards to astronomical matters.
Not sure I agree with this. I'd say "some arguments are beyond proof at the current time" rather than just "some arguments are beyond proof, period". I mean for example right now String theory is essentially unprovable in a lot of ways, simply because it's beyond the reach of current technology, but that doesn't mean it will always be that way.

In fact as best as I can tell the only way for a statement to be truly unprovable would be for its true or falseness to have literally zero effect on you at all. For example if God can perform miracles by altering the physical world in some way, then that allows us to gain evidence pointing towards his existence or nonexistence. The only way it's truly impossible for us to gain evidence (and thus be unable to prove something), would be if he had no effect at all in any way, shape, or form, and thus it doesn't really matter if he exists or not, since it won't make a difference to you at any point in time (living or dead).
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Reelya

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #77 on: September 21, 2015, 04:29:28 pm »

I don't believe other countries exist, because I've never travelled to them. Same exact deal as the fossils.

Sergarr

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #78 on: September 21, 2015, 04:34:30 pm »

My contribution to derail: The first principle that scientists have faith in IMHO is that reality exists and is consistent within itself, i.e. real, and that all observable things are in some way connected to that reality. Thus you get "same inputs cause same probability distributions of outputs", the basis for scientific method.

The interesting thing is that the same principle can be applied to the practical applications of scientific method itself. Same meta-inputs (i.e. scientific rules and methods of conducting research and data collection for the specific field) result in same probability distributions of meta-outputs (achieving or not achieving scientific results, depending on the applicability of the methods used). Thus you don't actually need to go around digging in fossil at hand, as long as you can check the way the scientists researching that area have been conducting their research, and that's usually much easier.
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Bohandas

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #79 on: September 21, 2015, 04:39:28 pm »

My contribution to derail: The first principle that scientists have faith in IMHO is that reality exists and is consistent within itself,

For a certain value of consistent at any rate. It's been experimentally verified that subatomic particles get up to weird stuff when nobody's looking, and some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that not only can we not know the exact position and velocity of a particle simultaneously, but that both do not have defined values simultaneously.
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Reelya

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #80 on: September 21, 2015, 05:01:56 pm »

My contribution to derail: The first principle that scientists have faith in IMHO is that reality exists and is consistent within itself,

For a certain value of consistent at any rate. It's been experimentally verified that subatomic particles get up to weird stuff when nobody's looking, and some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that not only can we not know the exact position and velocity of a particle simultaneously, but that both do not have defined values simultaneously.

That reminds me of a debate on these forums about another unknowable, which was whether we live inside a simulation (The Matrix theory). Virtually every argument against it being so, could actually be shown to have some explanation which you can come up with based on real programming tricks you might use if you have memory limitations or the like.

E.g. the fuzziness of the Heisenberg principle is something that computer simulations with finite precision deal with all the time. Perhaps there are a finite amount of bits for each basic particle, and the system decides how much precision to apply to each variable, based on something similar to floating-point numbers (which automatically shifts how many bits are used for the part before and after the decimal point based on what number you want to store). And just so it doesn't look to smooth at low-levels, there's a pseudorandom number generator to auto-generate the gap.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2015, 05:04:24 pm by Reelya »
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Reelya

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #81 on: September 21, 2015, 05:11:06 pm »

The first is about doubt and what is knowable?  Well, that rules out proof of both the "matrix theory" and the "non-matrix theory" without any bias. You can say that debunks the matrix theory, because it equally debunks all theories. If we're not making any assumptions, then we need to apply the principle universally to all competing theories.

The second is that the mind is more than just the body, or more than just physical processes. This is debatable, for sure. Definitely not proven. But let's say that there is another 'level' on which conciousness arises. Where did that come from? It would need to arise as the patterns of energy information which flow within the physical level. But these same patterns also exist in a simulation. A simulated physical universe would give rise to the same complex phenomena as actual atoms which move according to the same rules.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2015, 05:20:52 pm by Reelya »
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Sergarr

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #82 on: September 21, 2015, 05:12:49 pm »

My contribution to derail: The first principle that scientists have faith in IMHO is that reality exists and is consistent within itself,

For a certain value of consistent at any rate. It's been experimentally verified that subatomic particles get up to weird stuff when nobody's looking, and some interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that not only can we not know the exact position and velocity of a particle simultaneously, but that both do not have defined values simultaneously.
That's why I mentioned "probability distributions".
That reminds me of a debate on these forums about another unknowable, which was whether we live inside a simulation (The Matrix theory). Virtually every argument against it being so, could actually be shown to have some explanation which you can come up with based on real programming tricks you might use if you have memory limitations or the like.

E.g. the fuzziness of the Heisenberg principle is something that computer simulations with finite precision deal with all the time. Perhaps there are a finite amount of bits for each basic particle, and the system decides how much precision to apply to each variable, based on something similar to floating-point numbers (which automatically shifts how many bits are used for the part before and after the decimal point based on what number you want to store). And just so it doesn't look to smooth at low-levels, there's a pseudorandom number generator to auto-generate the gap.
The really obvious argument against that version of "Matrix simulation" argument, which uses the same computer basis as we do (with bits and stuff), is that if it was that easy to model reality like that, we wouldn't have so much problems with doing it ourselves.
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Reelya

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #83 on: September 21, 2015, 05:21:38 pm »

There are a couple of obvious flaws with that argument.

(1) it doesn't have to be the same basis. Even quantum computing has precision limits. Even if infinite precision was possible, you'd have the problem of small peturbations becoming bigger than the data you're trying to store, giving you a practical limit on information density. So precision limits do not imply that they have to be Von Neumann computers or anything like modern machines. But those very precision limits on quantum phenomena are what allow us to state that they can be modeled finitely - which would be needed for a simulated system.

(2) modelling stuff is already trivial once you have the hardware. We can make bigger simulations this year than last year. just because our current simulations are limited doesn't mean future simulations won't be much more massive and detailed. They're basically guaranteed to be. So we have a situation where we have exponential growth in processing power, and simulation complexity matches that growth. Surely, we will make big simulations. Then someone will make a bigger one. And this will keep happening basically forever. Humans always want to create something bigger than what came before.

(3) any hypothesized super-civilization could be the equivalent of humans, but with literally billions of years of technological development. We have about 10000 years worth of tech, and the universe isn't going to end any time soon. Imagine our current tech, but carried on for longer than the entire earth has existed, and that's what we have to conjecture as the limits of technology. So the question is "would humans in 1 billion years find this relatively easy?" not "would we find this easy?".
« Last Edit: September 21, 2015, 05:52:18 pm by Reelya »
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LordBucket

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #84 on: September 21, 2015, 05:37:17 pm »

I'd similarly contest this, or at least part of this, on two, maybe three levels.

I don't think that your responses contest what I'm saying though.

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One, people tend not to "seek verification" for much of anything, so saying people don't do it when they've been raised to believe X is, to me, overstating the importance of raising people to believe X. Inertia is powerful and most people don't care about most things, but it's hard to tell how potent X-raising is when any default tends to stick around until dislodged.

Ok, yes. I would agree that people rarely seek verification. In fact, that's a big part of my premise. That people don't believe what they believe for reasons of logic or evidence. If I'm "overstating" the significance of childhood learning as part of the mechanism for instilling belief...well, ok. Maybe. But I don't think a strongly held belief acquired at a time other than childhood is exempt from the phenomenon we're discussing. Really, the "raise a child to believe" thing was more an example than central to my thesis. I think it's a good example, and certainly a common case, but if you want to point out that the phenomenon occurs in other cases too, I'm certainly not going to object to that.

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in my experience people are really only stubborn about things they care about- so usually instinctive and/or cultural things. Tell somebody their god is stupid and made up, and they'll get mad. Tell somebody that glass is not, in fact, a slow-flowing liquid, and they'll be skeptical but not angry, just dubious.

That might also be the case. What I'm saying does not contradict and is not contradicted by what you're saying. However, it has been my observation that in the specific case of dinosaurs, people tend to be very angry if you ask them to justify their belief in dinosaurs. I've done it. So if dinosaurs are "things people care about" then there's no conflict between what you're saying and what I'm saying.

Unfortunately, it's also been my experience that an awful lot of people have difficulty distinguishing "why do you believe in dinosaurs?" from "I assert that dinosaurs are fake." And when you ask them to explain why they believe, rather than self-examining why they believe what they do, they tend to try to prove to you that dinosaurs were real. Which is completely missing the point.

I suppose we lack data here. Maybe the thing to do would be to pick something else people believe, like say...that the earth orbits the sun. And ask them why they believe it. Like dinosaurs, that's also something that people believe, but that's terribly difficult for the average person to have any relevant evidence of.

I predict that asking people to justify their belief in heliocentrism would also tend to make them mad. Even though it's something that they probably have less reason to care about than dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are "cool" to young kids. Planetary orbits probably aren't. And yet I predict that it will nevertheless make them angry to have that belief questions. I don't think it's about personal relevance, or how much they care about the topic. I think it's simple cognitive dissonance. People believe a lot of things simply because they've been told to believe them, and like you say, they tend not to verify things. I think that having firmly held beliefs questioned is painfully uncomfortable to most people, and I think that showing them that they don't actually have any good reason to believe the things they do, is also uncomfortable.


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Three... honestly? In my experience, even when people do care, it often feels like they know the thing itself isn't the actual issue half the time. Religion is a big offender here- I mean, really? You want to tell me, with a straight face, that there's an entity powerful enough to create the entire world, who is deeply interested in your personal actions, and you're not learning original Hebrew and ancient Jewish culture to better understand what this terribly sky terror wants and is like? But even with social issues and the like, it often feels like the issue isn't that they genuinely believe that every scientific study that contradicts them is irrelevant or fraudulent, it feels like they just don't care because that's not the real issue. At a bare minimum, I'd wager a lot of people aren't nearly as convinced of their own arguments as they are concerned about what would happen if the other guys won.

Sports team favoritism or friendly trash talk would of course be the poster children for this concept

That might well be the case...in some cases. Sports teams being, as you say, the poster child. A guy might know that his team is bad, but he'll angrily defend it anyway. Nationalism being another strong example. Question america, and americans tend to freak out.

But the phenemonon you're describing is not mutually exclusive with my premise. Again, heliocentrisism probably isn't something most people have any reason to "care" about, but it probably is a thing that people genuinely believe. And again, I predict that people would be angry if you questioned it.

I might have to test that.

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The fact that any shoe-confirming or Marhollygon-disparaging evidence is ultimately subject to the same problems doesn't mean they're both equally valid and likely notions

asking "and how do you know that?" repeatedly tends to result in earlier, more numerous, and more serious problems along the priest chain than the scientist chain.

Maybe. But the same problem does occur in both chains.

Please understand, it's not my ultimate intention to argue the merits of science vs religion. It's my intention to discuss the nature of belief. Dinosaurs, science and religion are merely good vehicles for that discussion.


Sergarr

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #85 on: September 21, 2015, 05:59:14 pm »

The existence of modeling software kind of implies that we are already doing it.

Saying "we haven't modeled a whole universe yet, though" is the same as saying since our rockets haven't flown to another solar system, then it isn't possible. Considering that the universe will be around for a long time, what sort of tech could a billion-year old civilization amass? Our race has the potential to be around for a very long time, so 1-billion year future tech is not a fiction, it's something that will inevitably become a reality. So it makes almost no sense to compare the limits of current tech with the possibility of simulated universes for a highly advanced society.
But then it makes no sense for you to invoke current limitations of technology (finite amount of memory) in order to counter arguments against simulation. It's pretty trivial to imagine that some future civilization will fully master space-time and thus gain ability to do infinitely-precise calculations and thus have effectively-infinite memory for modelling calculations.
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Reelya

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #86 on: September 21, 2015, 06:06:50 pm »

I pointed out that even with infinite precision molecules you eventually have small perturbations which erase any information you're trying to store. Hence, finite precision would be the practical limit of any data-storage system. Regardless of how future-y you want to get, you eventually have the problem that fluctuations are bigger than the data. None of that changes the fact that there definitely seems to be far more finite-ness in quantum phenomena than is explained by perturbations. Specifically, quantum / planck limits and the heisenberg uncertainty principle.

The difference he is that I'm sticking to science and computing principles we know about, to make my arguments. Whereas you're saying it's "trivial" to conceive of a race which exists outside the rules of spacetime and hence none of the laws of physics apply to them. That's just a balony argument.
« Last Edit: September 21, 2015, 06:10:18 pm by Reelya »
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i2amroy

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #87 on: September 21, 2015, 06:20:46 pm »

Couple of things:
1) It's totally possible to create computing systems that don't have fixed values, rely on observation effects, and so forth just like we think atoms do. The only reason we can't model atoms and such right now is because we don't know all of the rules to the needed level of precision yet, not because of some intrinsic limit of computing. Thus this can't "prove" or "disprove" the matrix theory, because it's not a real limitation to computers.

2) The matrix theory is a good example of an "unprovable" theory like I was talking about in my earlier post. There would literally be no difference between a true "matrix" universe and a real one. As such you can't "prove" it either way, because it literally has no effect on what we term as "reality" to see the difference in, and it also has literally no effect on you at any point in time so there's no reason to care about it. All we can do is say either yes or no to "imperfect matrixes", ones that would have an actual difference between "reality" and a "simulation" (which we would then be able to test and gather data on, and move on from there with the knowledge that it was either probably true or not).
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Sergarr

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #88 on: September 21, 2015, 06:41:02 pm »

I pointed out that even with infinite precision molecules you eventually have small perturbations which erase any information you're trying to store. Hence, finite precision would be the practical limit of any data-storage system. Regardless of how future-y you want to get, you eventually have the problem that fluctuations are bigger than the data. None of that changes the fact that there definitely seems to be far more finite-ness in quantum phenomena than is explained by perturbations. Specifically, quantum / planck limits and the heisenberg uncertainty principle.

The difference he is that I'm sticking to science and computing principles we know about, to make my arguments. Whereas you're saying it's "trivial" to conceive of a race which exists outside the rules of spacetime and hence none of the laws of physics apply to them. That's just a balony argument.

You don't need to exist outside of rules of spacetime to do infinitely-precise calculations, reality does it every time when there's an irrational number in the calculation, like a square root of two, or pi, or Eiler's number. Which is to say, nearly always, because Eiler's number is in every single quantum equation and pi is in most of them.

So, if you construct the exact (or mathematically equal to one) replica of the universe you're trying to simulate, it will be an infinitely-precise model. There would be some uncertainty from the part where you set the initial conditions, but that wouldn't affect the precision of the model itself.

P.S:
Also, planck limits are just an estimation for where you can expect quantum gravity effects to start. Heisenberg's uncertainly has nothing to do with gravity. So your "too much finite-ness" argument is not even wrong.
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LordBucket

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Re: On the acceptance of statements and the burden of proof
« Reply #89 on: September 21, 2015, 06:42:52 pm »

Note that there would be no need to simulate an entire universe. Simply simulate earth and its surrounding space, then feed the simulation data that looks like a rest of the universe.
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