What’s the difference between epistemology and ontology? epistemological claims are statements about belief, about your map, about what we can say about reality and ontological claims are statements about reality, about the territory, about how things are
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Sagan scale 🎨
A tool for gauging whether somebody is too skeptical or too open to ideas. As
Round theories and loose evidence
Many mechanisms in the world are very specific. If explanations are too "round" or too generic this might mean it's not real.
Bad explanation: Easy to vary. Good explanation: Hard to vary (that is every detail plays a functional role). via
How do I understand this?
- Easy-to-vary: There is a woman in the state of Washington with a large following who claims to make contact with someone from 35,000 years ago. Why exactly 35,000 and not 34,365 years ago? (source ). Another example is the mythical explanation of the seasons by Demeter, which is easy to vary and lacks the functional role of every detail. One can swap any detail of the story and the whole explanation would remain intact.The Burden of Skepticism
- Hard-to-vary: In contrast, imagine different connected, cross-influencing nodes that lock the answer in a more rigid (hard-to-vary) position. If one detail is changed in a scientific theory, all others would need to change or be tweaked accordingly. In the current scientific explanation of seasons, every detail plays a functional role, with the 23-degree tilt of the Earth and its orbit around the sun being crucial factors. This tilt is essential to the Earth's exposure to the sun's heat, and any change in this angle would impact temperatures or the position or time of sunsets.
Hard-to-vary explanations have much clearer structure and are probably a lot more testable.
Cognitive biases
People who exhibits
In a group setting I asked a bunch of ecologist and bio-philosophers what they think about nuclear energy. It wasn’t a surprise to me that I heard a bunch of skeptical attitudes. I asked what they are worried specifically. One philosopher on a phd level said about dangers of the nuclear storage. She said that we always postpone answers to the future. We don’t know if in future we will find a technology that will utilize the nuclear waste. Currently there are no good places to store becaues because we cannot foresee forces that can shape earth in the long span of time. She stopped at this. This stroke me as too round theory. Theory with to little specificity. Why there wasn’t more details for example something mentioning that the places in the world are equally bad. Most of the attributes of the physical world vary. I would expect that there should be some places that are more prefferable than other. Is it true even though geological surface of earth vary a lot there are no perfect conditions that would lock nuclear waste in place?
Law of the Instrument
People who are really good at a specific area of knowledge may sometimes think that their expertise transcends disciplinary boundaries and can explain a surprisingly high volume of subjects. (Read more on Law of the Instrument here)
Forceful Interpretation
When explanations seem forceful or overly complicated, this may indicate that the quality of the explanation is not the highest.
This image shows the paths of the planets in the solar system before and after the realization of heliocentrism.
Mainstream evolutionary biologists fight with a view that there might be a parallel process to natural selection. Would proving that aesthetic selection is true undermine findings and status of majority of experts? Read More:
Related: Occam's razor, which values explanations composed of the smallest set of elements.
We may be at the beginning of “rationality”
General skepticism of premature practical application. It took 300 years between Harvey discovering the circulatory system and anyone being very good at treating circulatory disease. It took 50 years between Pasteur discovering germ theory and anyone being very good at treating infections. It took 250 years between Newton discovering gravity and anyone being very good at flying. I have a lower prior than you on good science immediately translating into useful applications. And I am just not too impressed with the science here. Kahneman and Tversky discovered a grab bag of interesting facts, some of which in retrospect were false. I still don't think we're anywhere near the deep understanding of rationality that would make me feel happy here.
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In Voltaire’s classic novel Candide, Dr. Pangloss is a teacher of “metaphysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigology” who believes he lives in the best of all possible worlds. “It is clear,” he said, “that things cannot be other than the way they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end. For instance, noses were made to support spectacles, hence we wear spectacles. Legs, as anyone can see, were made for breeches, and so we wear breeches. Stones were made to be shaped into castles; thus My Lord has a fine castle because the greatest baron in the province ought to have the finest house. And because pigs were made to be eaten, we eat pork all year round. So those who say that everything is well are speaking foolishly; they should say that everything is best.” from
- If you can invent an equally persuasive explanation for any outcome, you have zero knowledge.
Alas, belief is easier than disbelief; we believe instinctively, but disbelief requires a conscious effort. So instead, by dint of mighty straining, I forced my model of reality to explain an anomaly that never actually happened. And I knew how embarrassing this was. I knew that the usefulness of a model is not what it can explain, but what it can’t. A hypothesis that forbids nothing, permits everything, and thereby fails to constrain anticipation. Your strength as a rationalist is your ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality. If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge. from
List things that are:
- Fringe that may be truth e.g. Some contemporary heresis
- Fringe that may be not truth
- Mainstream that may be truth
- Mainstream that may not be truth