Susan Haack has some decent work on the subject.

I take issue with her arguments on demarcation and falsifiability a little bit, and I think she is a little guilty of nut-picking fallacies when talking about the extent to which at people hold to scientism.

That said, I think she does a good job explaining how we can have issues with science, and how some people view it. How we need to be aware of the intricacies of science, not just fall for anything labelled as science, and not forget that science it is susceptible to human error.

She also rebuts the common misconceptions of science and philosophy being separate, or science and religion being parts of separate domains.

People dangerously conflate anti-science with scientism as a way to avoid the tension between modern science and outdated beliefs(often religious or spiritual ones). But its key to remember science is simply the best philosophical method we have for discovering truth and knowledge. I would not say its the only way to knowledge, as thats too strong, and we run into serious definitional games and grey areas.

While i mostly agree with Susan's definition with scientism(kind of like gullibility for anything with the label science), I think most people who use the term are anti-science people who straw-man science or attempt a tu quoque fallacy to blissfully hold their unscientific beliefs on equal footing.

1. I don't think unpredictability is a great definition of free will. Its incomplete imo.

2. The compatiblist definition seems what ur closest too, and this seems like a reasonable free will. Most philosophers believe in compatibalist free will.

3. Libertarian free will is absolute nonsense on par with believing in fairies and only a thought in peoples heads because of religious indoctrination. This requires being able to do different if you hit replay... as you correctly state is nonsense.

Redefinitions of free will are kind of useless imo... as ur simply not talking about what others are. Theres way too much baggage on the term free will causing equivocation on redefinition. Whats the point of redefining free will to some infinite state space predictability stuff that has nothing to do with what others mean... why not use a different term to define a different concept? I think the reason is because we piggyback off the baggage of the term "free will".

Theres issues with scale of predictability as well. Example quantum systems and reality may be fundamentally probabilistic, but for any actual mental decisions and things at human scale they fundamentally aren't probabilistic and are predictable. Similarly unpredictable numerous potential neuron states does not mean unpredictable decisions or actions. Also human action is fundamentally highly highly predictable in many ways, our inability to predict things does not mean they are unpredictable. I guarantee when ai can better measure brain states it can certainly predict our outcomes almost perfectly. As neural nets will make this trivial.

If ur definition relies so heavily on predictability, what happens to your "free will" when ai or a psychologist predict your behavior. Do mentally ill people or people with bipolar have more free will because their actions are fundamentally more unpredictable?

I think there is also massive problems with ur infinite state space claims. Taking the amount of neurons then just adding them as a binary is insanely wrong... thats not how neurons work even remotely, or math, or brains, or physical space. Its akin to saying theres 2^^999999999999999 atom combinations in my body... therefore i have infinite potential of body forms i can take. Its preposterous imo. Theres also assumptions like every neuron can interact, despite that obviously not being even close to true as neurons can only interact with the few in their proximity. Also theres the issue of equating mental representations of physical numbers to a binary brain state, as if our understanding of the number 1 = brain state neural binary 01.. this is not what numbers or how our brain represents them. Then there is the issue of even if i grant all this... that immeasurably large number of neuron combinations is still not infinite... its unreachable... BUT its fundamentally NOT infinite.

Maybe i just don't understand what you mean... but then again thats another problem with redefining words with a lot of baggage.

Correct most bad claims like a flying teapot actually have strong evidence against them as well. But the point is meant to harp on unfalsifiable claims.

The problem is that you cannot demonstrate an invisible physics defying teapot is not out there ... its unfalsifiable. You cannot use physics to disprove it... my claims is that it defies physics... etc.

We have extreme amounts if rock solid actual empirical evidence we do not live in a firmament... or flying winged horses... or raising people from the dead... etc is not even reasonably possible... But the problem is unfalsifiable claims. Example I claim physics was different back then... or this horse transcended physics... or the person raising people from the dead could transcend reality. They use some sort of special pleading, I cannot ever prove impossible, and its not even reasonable to expect anyone to debunk these ideas... The only reasonable null hypothesis is non acceptance...

Correct i am not just agnostic towards flying teapots in orbit around earth... I actively have evidence against it, and have knowledge towards its improbability. But the idea is more about staying skeptical and how trivially and useless unfalsifiable, supernatural, or magical claims are. That said... if you can prove em.... go ahead but a massive burden is on you.

edit: While the teapot isn't completely unfalsifiable... and you can talk about levels of unfalsifiability. The burden of proof, a null hypothesis, and skepticism towards wild claims is whats important.

Its not perfect

But an important thought process to understand reasonable claims.

Hey im not gonna say 'there cannot be a teapot in space' or 'there are no teapots out there'... But a reasomable skeptical mind is not gonna accept that claim till its demonstrated

That Bertrand Russell guy had some good thoughts on accepting unfalsifiable claims.

Theres also a good psychological concept known as motivated perception/reasoning.

Being aware of these ideas may help avoid accepting nonsense without being too close minded.

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edit: have very high standards and filter everything through it equally while being aware of ur biases and what you want to be true.

lol amazing

I program and i use javascript every day. Javascript is a great way to model real world interactions and i implement business logic with it. I even use it to map the underlying logic of reality onto an underlying visual and dynamic reality users perceive. So glad to see Javascript used to interpret the human experience. Lol

I love how this sub eats this crap up.

Make nonsense sound like a profound deepity and ule get upvotes

I also program and have zero clue what you mean by closures are a very effective model for interactions with real-world systems'. Thats not what a closure is... Closures are a basic part of languages and scoping... hell i extensively use closures when writing basically anything. No idea how its a model... or effective at interactions eith real world systems... its just a matter of scoping and accessing outer variables.

What you said sounds like a deepity

No doubt. It was kinda besides the point as i said. I was just playing devils advocate as I'm sure there's at least some situation or person where measuring neurotransmitters is more helpful than self reporting. Also it can be helpful in addition to self reporting.

But i would generally agree self reporting is much more valuable.

I agree with you 100% im basically adding on to refuting klosnj11

Thats about as good as it gets. Maybe you could argue machines measuring neurotransmitters can be better sometimes, but the point is that you dont need access directly to someone subjective qualia to make good, helpful, meaningful scientific assessments of happiness. Meaningful inductive assessments can be made through self reporting and other assessment methods.

Klosnj11 is conflating science seeking general and useful understandings of happiness to a completely objective understanding of happiness. Just like the mustard manufacturer can study taste to improve it generally, but doesn't claim to objectively perfect taste.

Really well put with the mustard analogy.

You don't need access to another person's qualia, to make reasonable judgements on happiness. Can you make perfect assessments of their happiness... No. But i don't think people can make perfect assessments of their own happiness even with their qualia.

Nobody is seeking perfect understanding of each persons subjective happiness, the same way a chef ain't seeking perfect understanding of every single persons subjective taste pallette. That doesnt mean you cant find patterns and techniques that tend to better peoples experience, and understanding the type of person it works for...And thats extremely valuable.

We can study the Qualia of others. Even if we cant experience others qualia exactly as they do, that does not mean we cannot make inductive assessments about it. This is the same mistake people make with the problem of induction... we cannot have perfect true knowledge using induction... but that does not mean we cannot possess knowledge and study things... it just means we can't have perfect knowledge, capital T truth. Yes, we cannot have perfect knowledge of someone's qualia of happiness... but thats meaningless since nothing in science claims or seeks that.

Hmm maybe I will read more into Chalmer. See if that changes my thinking

Thanks for the info and responses.

You can levy any argument against knowing without consciousness against knowing consciousness without consciousness.

Yes you can't experience the taste of food without the ability to taste food. Yes you can't experience consciousness without the ability to experience consciousness... but can you know it? Well it all comes down to how you define knowing... your argument is about knowing consciousness.

To define knowing in a way that you do to combat my more parsimonious statement requires you giving up ur argument. Example if you say: a non sentient thing processing can know things. Well than a non sentient thing processing can know consciousness and ur argument fails. You must argue knowing requires inner experience and awareness, for both your and my more parsimonious statement to stand.

As i said it would boil down to, all there is to debate is whether ur definition of knowing requires experience and/or awareness. If you say no, ur right my argument fails... but so does urs. We both must say yes, and in the end all were really saying is saying you can't experience things without the ability to experience that thing.

Which we both agree with, but just seems an obvious tautology to me.

Is this not just a super obvious tautology?

You cant know of consciousness without being conscious.... yeah you cant know anything without it.

It seems like a bit of a mistake to think understanding consciousness requires a metaphysical relation to it specifically. And while its is correct, it is akin to a correlation, causation mistake. You are arguing: you need to have X to understand and know X, so we might be missing Y because we dont have Y. While it is true that we cant know X without X, its a mistake to think there is a special relation between X and knowing X. Rather it's simply X is a requirement to understand or know anything in the first place. So obviously to understand X we need X, but there is no key relation between the two, you need X to understand. Having X has just as much of a relationship in understand X, as it does A,B,C,D,E, etc...

The statement imo is obviously true, but the whole point is wrong because the more parsimonious statement is simply: "you can't know of consciousness without being conscious."

You can get into weird useless arguments about how you prefer to define knowing or consciousness, but it's pretty all useless talking past each other and language games at that point. But even if you define knowing, in a way something unconscious like a computer can know, you can simply make the same argument for anything to say something unconscious can know consciousness. And again its simply argument of definitions. In both situations leaving out consciousness is more parsimonious.

Conspiracy theories involve people accepting a hypothesis before they have reasonable justification, often because of bias or misinformation or some other prior conviction. These hypothesis usually aren't mainstream, and involve some sort of special, hidden knowledge but not always.

That doesn't mean they are wrong, it means we have no reason to accept those ideas as true. We are using poor critical thinking by accepting these bad hypothesis we call conspiracy theories. The door for good evidence is always open, the problem is these people usually don't even understand what that is or have any basic ability in science and math.

Its important not to dismiss unorthodox hypothesis, but its irrational to not apportion belief to the evidence. The problem is most conspiracy theorists are people who usually aren't even capable of understanding scientific evidence.

From a pragmatic sense you should mostly ignore those people. Putting the .010 batter in ur lineup just because you think his swing is unorthodox is still dumb. Yes they might get a hit, but we only have finite time and resources and until they learn how to swing a bat properly its not worth the time.

Maybe we miss out on that one rare hit, but we skip 100 bad outs and get a lot more hits in the long run.

For sure its definetely the extremes that tend to go that way.

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Im not sure how ur testosterone levels remove credit from a statement, that doesn't quite logically follow, but ok. I haven't checked in a while but i was high T last time as well. So... Nice? maybe that gives me credit back?

Sure you can ignore that word, it's well defined, but it is pretty unimportant to my point.

Tbh, i'm a centrist, and i didn't intend to get caught up on political bs, but its not a bold statement to say the evangelical far right and conspiracy go together like white and rice.

Lol u again

I agree,

As Jeremy Bentham says: "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to de"

But i think cognitive biases perform those psychological functions you mentioned. They help people feel vindicated or superior, or good or belonging to a tribe, and they help us avoid the pain of things like cognitive dissonance, even if short sighted. That is exactly why we have biases, the same reason you mentioned

I think we are actually saying almost the exact same thing.

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> In this way otherwise thoughtful, intelligent people can cling to conspiracy theories. Educating them on critical thinking is therefore not always effective because the critical thinking strategies can be employed with a desired goal (to maintain those core beliefs).

I think i mean the same thing by biases and you do by core beliefs. I refer to them as biases because just that word implies an irrational stickiness to the belief. But really i think we are saying close to the same thing.

I think that generally if people are more knowledgeable, have a sound epistemology, and are strong critical thinking they will generally need an even higher level of bias(or unwillingness to let go of core beliefs) to maintain extremely irrational beliefs like conspiracy theories.

I also think a core aspect of critical thinking is not letting your biases inform your beliefs. Unlike intelligence, which is basically horsepower. You can have lots lot of horsepower, but its more about getting the power down in the right direction. People who are smart but lack critical think are just spinning tires.

The definition from google: "The subject is complex; several different definitions exist, which generally include the rational, skeptical, and unbiased analysis or evaluation of factual evidence."

I kinda of agree with this definition

While ide say Oz is intelligent, i wouldn't say he has great critical thinking skills, and i wouldn't say his biases inform his critical thinking. An irrational intelligent person is definitely more difficult to debate and can be stubborn but i wouldn't call that person a critical thinker, as I think part of critical thinking requires deep introspection of biases, and consistent application of sound epistemology.

The conspiracy equation:

h = intelligence

c = critical thinking skills

b = bias

y = rationality

Y = B - HC^(2)

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lol

good chat

No doubt, I'm definetely oversimplifying. Il go into some depth here since you had a great response.

I think it usually comes down to two main things: some sort of bias and lack of critical thinking in a certain area.

I think wanting for special knowledge is the most common bias. But there are near endless biases: religion, politics, tribalism, etc. I think being stupid is the most common reason for lack of critical thinking but bias often drives inconsistent epistemology.

I like to use my own conspiracy prone relatives for examples. They demand double blind clinical research for anything they dont like, yet are convinced by the slightest anecdotal evidence for virtually any idea that confirms their biases. Its a matter of bias and epistemological inconsistency. Ex. The US govt sent something to india for covid relief and didnt release the details. To them, this is proof that the US govt is shipping ivermectin to India because they know it works, yet is hiding it from their own population. An argument from ignorance is sufficient 'evidence' in this case, but the same person says epidemiological studies arent enough to prove adverse effects of the carnivore diet(even though tons of clinical research does exist). Shout out Joe Rogan for the misinfo on that one. The standards are scattershot.

They often take partial truths to illogical conclusions driven by their bias and lack of knowledge. Example people like Kanye:

Fact: Jews per capita are often wealthy people, own a lot of businesses and banks and often successful people. Conspiracy: well... theres a lot, im sure uve heard many Result: rampant anti semitism and a world war.

I've thought a lot about whats the problem with their thinking. I think the problem occurs when biases are stronger than your epistemology.

A common bias is wanting for special knowledge. These same people constantly fall for the "They don't want you to know this" type videos and literally fall into nft scams, and day trading scams, religious scams, you name it.

Whether its pure stupidity like Terrance Howard or taking facts and applying inconsistent epistemology like my relatives, the conspiracy is driven by bias and lack of knowledge in basically all cases.

Poor understanding of science is also super common. For smart people like Oz i think its excessive bias creating inconsistent episetomology(with some dishonest grifting on top), but its hard to know. The less intelligent or educated they are, the easier it is to see what makes them tick.

IMO its a scale of bias to epistemology. Stupid people don't need a lot of bias to tip that scale the wrong way, and smart people can still be really biased.

Just look at people like Terrance Howard.

A genuinely stupid person...

Deep need to possess special knowledge...

Cant actually understand math at a deep level or put in effort to get a math degree...

Invents his own theory of mathematics 1x1 = 2 and thinks math and science experts are a cabal of idiots.

People who dont understand what an Argument from ignorance fallacy is, mixed with lack of education, critical thinking skills and the wanting to possess special knowledge...

Lol brutal spelling on my part

Again i never said it was the end all solution, i even implied i think the author doesnt intend that.

Im advising against using language that makes it seem such.

Its the title of this post...

I stated myself i don't think the author is that nieve naive.

Its simply a suggestion against using such language.

I would be careful with the hyperbolic language... things like "can only be countered by".

I don't think you or anyone is nieve naive enough to actually think this is the only way. But when we exaggerate the importance of one tactic, we ignore others.

Statements less extreme are boring, but more importantly they are true.