#Falsifiability

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Gurwinder

Published: Feb 21, 2025

The poet Emily Dickinson once wrote that “The Brain—is wider than the Sky— For—put them side by side— The one the other will contain With ease—and you—beside.”

I’m rather ashamed to nitpick poetry, but, objectively speaking, the sky is wider than the brain. It’s vaster than we can see, deeper than we can fathom, and made of more particles than we can count. Even basic facts about the sky often escape us, such as the fact that there is more sky beneath us than above us.

Due to its limitations, the brain can only “contain” the sky by first flattening it into a bluish sheet. We shrink the world to fit our minds, and think we’ve expanded our minds to grasp the world.

Since our brains are made for small ideas rather than big ones, the best way to discern truth is not with elaborate, all-encompassing philosophies but with simple, easy to follow instructions called heuristics.

A heuristic is a mental shortcut, a way to shrink the sky so it fits the mind. Since a heuristic cuts corners and simplifies reality, it should be used as a rule of thumb and not a universal law.

Below I present to you 10 heuristics that I use to avoid being fooled.

1. Epistemic Humility

Instead of trying to be right, try to be less wrong.

The investor Charlie Munger said, ���It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

Avoiding idiocy is much simpler than achieving genius, so it’s easier to turn into a habit. Furthermore, if we try to be right then we’ll often convince ourselves we’re right even when we’re not. But if we begin from the position that we’re wrong, and we simply try to be less wrong, we gain more awareness of our blindspots and become less wedded to our beliefs, reducing our resistance to learning.

2. Munger's Iron Prescription

Another gem from Munger: If you can't state the opposing view at least as well as the people supporting it, then you shouldn’t feel entitled to your own view.

Take the time to learn how people you don’t agree with think. Seek out the best advocates of opposing views. Sometimes you’ll find that what you thought were your strongest counterarguments are in fact easily refuted. And sometimes you’ll find far better lines of attack. Either way, learning what the other side thinks (and not what people on your side tell you the other side thinks) will save you from much stupidity.

3. Survivorship Bias

During WWII, the statistician Abraham Wald examined planes riddled with bullet-holes from recent battles. He concluded that the best areas of the planes to reinforce with armor were not the regions with the most bullet-holes, but the least. The reason was that the planes he was examining were the ones that had safely returned; those that received damage to other areas didn’t survive to be examined.

This is relevant today because the information we consume online must also survive significant selection effects before we see it. Crucially, the info in your feed has been selected because it’s surprising. It is therefore an indication not of the ordinary but the extraordinary, a reflection not of reality but of that which is uncharacteristic of reality. Remember this whenever your feed convinces you the world is going crazy.

4. Wittgenstein's Ruler

The less you know of the measurer compared to the thing being measured, the less the measurer’s measure measures the thing being measured and the more it measures the measurer.

As an analogy, if a man says everyone he meets is an asshole, the asshole is likely him.

You can apply this concept to any source of information. For example, if a news outlet’s stories frequently outrage you, instead of taking it as evidence the world is becoming more outrageous, consider the possibility that the news outlet is deliberately trying to outrage you, and temper your reactions accordingly.

Basically, never take information at face value, and always ask yourself, “what does the info from this source suggest about the source itself?”

5. Streetlight Effect

A police officer sees a drunkard searching under a streetlight and asks what the man has lost. The drunk says he lost his keys and the cop joins him in his search. After a few minutes the cop asks if the drunk is sure he lost the keys here, and the drunk says he’s not. The cop asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, “This is where the light is.”

The moral of the story is that people tend to search where it’s easiest to look. They get all their information from the first few search results, read the books that appear at the top of bestseller lists, and follow whatever topics are trending on social media.

The problem with such “streetlights” is that they reflect the behaviors, and cater to the desires, of the average human, and the average human isn’t very smart. If you want to avoid popular blindspots, avoid getting your info from popularity contests like top search results, “trending” algorithms, and bestseller lists.

6. Popper’s Falsifiability Principle

As rationalizing creatures who often believe things because they’re convenient rather than because they’re true, we excel at guarding our beliefs from evidence that threatens them.

An example of such a belief is “white fragility,” the idea that white people unconsciously resist recognizing “white privilege” because they don’t want to lose that privilege. The concept of white fragility can’t be realistically refuted, because anyone who challenges its existence is accused of exhibiting it (including nonwhite people, who are accused of “internalizing” white supremacy.)

If a belief you hold can’t be falsified, then this is a sign that you’ve protected it from reality. As such, for each of your beliefs you should develop a clear idea of what would persuade you you're wrong. If you can’t, your belief is immune to reason and you should be highly suspicious of it.

7. Antiroutine

Indoctrination typically occurs by rote; constant reinforcement of an idea until it’s engraved into your mind. Creepily, news and commentary outlets often engage in this constant reinforcement, reiterating the same talking points again and again, making the news fit their views instead of their views fit the news.

So to avoid being brainwashed, regularly switch up your news sources so you alternate between outlets of clashing political stances. If you read the New York Times on Thursday, then read the Wall Street Journal on Friday. If you read The Prism on Monday, then read some bastard who disagrees with me on Tuesday. The more mercurial your news consumption, the greater your resistance to manipulation.

8. Opinion Lock

A great danger of the culture war is that it pressures people to take stances on issues they know little about. As such, many people form strong opinions without giving them due consideration. This wouldn’t be a big problem if people were constantly updating their views. Unfortunately, people don’t like to change their mind, especially not publicly, because they think it makes them seem weak or stupid.

Before social media, people could save face when changing their mind by pretending they'd never held the obsolete opinion. But now that there's a public record of utterances, changing beliefs can’t be easily hidden, so instead people double down on their old opinions, fortifying their follies.

Therefore, resist the instinct to state a half-baked opinion, as once you’ve declared your stance, your ego will do all it can to stop you from changing your mind.

9. The Never-Ending Now

Humans are neophiles; they’re attracted to whatever’s new. As such, they're always chasing the latest info, ignoring anything older than 24 hours. The problem with this approach is that the latest info is often shit. Its main selling point is not its quality but its novelty, and to ensure its novelty it is typically rushed out, so it’s mostly untested and often inaccurate.

This lack of quality control means the newest info is also the most perishable, and people who endlessly chase it spend their lives in a never-ending now of momentary seeing and forgetting, a trench in time that obscures the past and future.

If you want to improve the quality of the info that enters your head, end your addiction to the new. Instead of mindlessly scrolling through breaking news, status updates, and the latest gossip, seek out info that's stood the test of time: classic literature, replicated studies, proven theorems, and fulfilled predictions. Millennia of humanity’s accumulated wisdom await you.

10. Journaling

The best way to practise clear thinking is to practise clear writing.

We're forever lost in external stimuli: phones, computers, other people. They keep us distracted from our thoughts, estranging us from ourselves. As such, we often don’t realize what we believe, which often causes us to cobble together makeshift opinions to meet an immediate need.

You only become fully aware of your beliefs when you express them, so if you’re unsure about them, write them down. Laying your thoughts out on paper will reveal your reasoning and expose its errors. It will also generate new ideas, deepening your understanding.

When you see how often writing down your thoughts changes your view of them, you’ll stop trusting beliefs that have never escaped the confines of your head.

[geopolicraticus]

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Karl Popper on Historicism and Indeterminism     

Sunday 28 July 2024 is the 122nd anniversary of the birth of Karl Popper (28 July 1902 - 17 September 1994), who was born in Vienna on this date in 1902.

Popper’s philosophy of history, expressed his The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945 and The Poverty of Historicisim in 1957, can be understood as an application of his conception of knowledge, worked out in his philosophy of science, to history and the social sciences, which he equates as both being illicitly involved in a project of attempting to make historical predictions. Denying the possibility of prediction in history, Popper argued again historical determinism and inevitability.

Quora:              https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ 

Discord:           https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD

Links:               https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/

Newsletter:     http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/

Text post:        https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/karl-popper-on-historicism-and-determinism  

Video:              https://youtu.be/HVn-FpY27F4  

Podcast:          https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/3zgCnoD2ALb

[ultramaga]

Except Gender Theory has no biological basis, so you are talking about the equivalent of opening up the North Korean textbooks to prove Kim is a living god. Gender is, at best, a psychological construct, at worst an outright fraud, but the book says BIOLOGY. There's not one page of a biology textbook that should be discussing non-biological topics. You can decide that your Gender is the three thousandth digit of pi set in stone on a blazing asphalt field in the Antarctic. Since it has no objective reality, AND IS NOT SUBJECT TO THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD, it cannot be disproven. But equally, it has nothing to do with biology. So read a book on biology that wasn't written by a Leftist. And yes, the Leftists wrote the texts for the last few years. That doesn't somehow invalidate the validity of human knowledge. What sex are you? If your belief doesn't match the biological reality, you are experiencing a delusion. Believing you are Napoleon doesn't make you Napoleon. Finding books by people who also believe they are Napoleon doesn't make you Napoleon.

You are mentally ill, and you are in a cult that is making you sicker, and looking at the suicide rates of your cult members, I advise you to get help from outside the cult.

[omegaphilosophia]

Demarcating Science: Criteria for Distinguishing Science from Pseudoscience

The demarcation problem, which is the challenge of distinguishing science from pseudoscience or non-science, has been a topic of debate among philosophers of science for many years. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem, but several proposed criteria and approaches have been suggested over time. Here are some potential solutions and criteria for addressing the demarcation problem:

Falsifiability (Karl Popper): According to Karl Popper, a scientific theory should be considered scientific if it is falsifiable. This means that for a theory to be scientific, there must be a way to test it empirically, and in principle, it should be possible to find evidence that could potentially refute or falsify the theory. If a theory is not falsifiable, it falls outside the realm of science.

Empirical Evidence: Another criterion for demarcating science from pseudoscience is the reliance on empirical evidence. Scientific claims should be based on empirical observations, experimentation, and data. If a purported scientific theory lacks empirical support and relies primarily on anecdotal evidence or testimonials, it may be considered pseudoscientific.

Predictive Power: Scientific theories often have predictive power. They can make testable predictions about future observations or experiments. The ability of a theory to make accurate and successful predictions can be seen as a hallmark of scientific validity.

Methodological Rigor: Science typically adheres to well-established and rigorous methods of inquiry, including the scientific method. The presence of systematic and well-documented research methods, peer review processes, and a commitment to critical evaluation can help distinguish science from non-science.

Progressive Research Program (Imre Lakatos): Imre Lakatos proposed a demarcation criterion based on research programs. He argued that scientific research programs should be judged by their ability to generate novel research questions and solutions. A scientific program that continually generates new questions and adapts to new evidence is considered progressive.

Consensus and Peer Review: Consensus among scientists and peer review processes can be used as indicators of scientific validity. Scientific claims that have withstood scrutiny, debate, and rigorous evaluation by experts in the field are more likely to be considered scientific.

Naturalism: Some philosophers argue for naturalism as a criterion, suggesting that scientific theories should be rooted in natural causes and explanations. Any theories invoking supernatural or unobservable entities may be considered pseudoscientific.

Historical Precedent: Examining historical cases of scientific advancement and the criteria used by scientists in the past to distinguish science from pseudoscience can provide insights into demarcation.

It's important to note that these criteria are not always clear-cut, and there may be gray areas where it is challenging to make definitive judgments. Additionally, some philosophers argue that the demarcation problem may not have a single, universal solution and that it may vary depending on the context and the specific scientific discipline under consideration. As a result, the demarcation problem remains a subject of ongoing debate and discussion in the philosophy of science.

[snowverit]

Do y'all think wiress actually just did nothing for her entire game?? They say she sat in the blindspot of opponent's and cameras the entire game- I read that like she probably also was trying to break the arena but the capital couldn't show it or something

[aeyumicore]

EXPOSING MY IMPERSONATOR/HARASSER: @/IZUWUS.

edit: final update to this situation here

edit 2 (9/22): her new blog is @/clitfilms with an alias of naya. be wary interacting with her.

edit 3 (9/26): She has switched accounts and aliases/personas MANY times in the past. She was previously miguelism/startitties as ‘Stella’ (lots of issues associated with this one). 

edit: people have also come forward to let me know that she was 'albaedo' and 'reinaphoria' (two deleted blogs that were used to also harass other writers)

She had an account that she deleted recently, in light of the discourse that came about from me exposing her as my harasser, that was called “@/movedtoizuwus.” I don’t know what it was called before she named it that. 

She then moved to maimochies/izuwus as Mai/Lise/Lili.

She used minimimies, exposingaeyumicore, aeyumiicore, and aeyumicores to harass me.

And now she is on clitfilms as Naya.

Her past accounts have had a LOT of drama and harassment associated with them. Go search it up for yourself on Tumblr. A lot of it is EERILY similar to what happened to me, in terms of how she spoke, the anons she sent, etc.

Other creators have reached out to me with similar experiences being harassed by blogs LINKED TO izuwus & startitties, and believe she has MANY other active blogs as well as deactivated blogs (reinaphoria) that are linked to harassment. I will not name drop those as I cannot say with the same degree of certainty that these are 100% her (like I know startitties and clitfilms to be) but I implore everyone to be careful who they interact with.

--

I have decided to move forward with exposing the person I know to be behind the @/exposingaeyumicore + @/aeyumicores (these two are the same account, just renamed), @/aeyumiicore, and @/minimimies accounts.

That person is another large, probably larger than myself, writer in this space. That person is @/izuwus.

The reason I have decided to expose: Izuwus has still not left me alone, since she took down the impersonator blog last Thursday (evidence in doc confirming the blog was self-deleted and not deleted by Tumblr). Yesterday, she stalked my Twitter, saw a tweet I made with an idea I had for a Sylus fic, and proceeded to steal the idea as her own, posting it onto her main. That was my breaking point. (More details and screenshot evidence in the document below).

I have spoken to the Tumblr Abuse Support Staff and they have confirmed that I can post this, and it would not be considered harassment as I am defending myself from the harassment I endured for the last almost 2 weeks.

I do not feel safe on my platforms. I will always be paranoid that Izuwus is stalking me. She will never stop. I have given her MANY opportunities to leave me alone. I have given them opportunities to confess privately. You will see all of those in my document, as well as even on my blog I have warned them publicly to leave me alone.

CLICK FOR LINK: EVIDENCE THAT IZUWUS IS EXPOSINGAEYUMICORE, AEYUMICORES, AEYUMIICORE, AND MINIMIMIES.

Please be warned, this document is 55 pages (and counting should I need to add more evidence). It contains heavy mentions of cyber bullying, harassment, and impersonation. The document contains video screen recordings and lots of screenshot evidence. That is why it is so long. I will try not to edit the document, but should more evidence arise, I will be adding it.

Note, I am not asking you to harass Izuwus, to unfollow, or to spread the word. I could not care less if this person loses or gains followers from this. If you decide to continue following them, I honestly don't mind, I won't hold any animosity towards you. We can still be friends, mutuals, etc. I just want to get my truth out, before she continues to twist the narrative in her favor.

As a note, I have literally almost never spoken to this writer prior to the events of August 17, where @/exposingaeyumicore was released. I am aware Izuwus has told some people that she and I are close (again I have proof). This could not be further from the truth. She literally had me soft blocked prior to this happening on August 17, and then hard blocked me with no warning after I responded to her in our DMs that I did think her new layout was identical to mine.

I also have never had any issues with any readers, writers, anyone on Tumblr prior to this debacle. Not in my asks, not in my messages, not publicly. I absolutely did not start this. She started this, and brought it to Tumblr. So I am letting the people of Tumblr make their own decisions.

I will not be mass-messaging this post to anyone. I will not be commenting this post to any of her posts. I will not be going down her list of followers and sending it to them. I will post it here, and my Twitter, and that's it.

I am posting this on my main blog, and not making a burner, because I have nothing to hide. Should Izuwus refute this, or continue to make ANY claims about me, I will not be responding. It is very clear that nothing she says can be trusted, and I have provided ample legitimate proof (using HER OWN screenshots + taking screen recordings).

Especially after the @/exposingaeyumicore post, I have proven my innocence time and again. I have nothing to hide. No reason to lie.

If any other harassment targeting me happens (impersonation, vile claims, photoshopped screenshots), or any other creators in this space for that matter, I think we know who it is.

I apologize if I am not able to respond to all comments, messages, or asks. I am so exhausted.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and if you decide to read the entire document, thank you again. Please stay safe online everyone. You could mind your own business and still be targeted. Be careful what info you share about yourself. Just be a good person.

[cuntnikida]

"gaslight gatekeep girlboss" and "mansplain manipulate malewife" are mantras that both start off with a form of socially unacceptable speech followed by some sort of manipulation and thirdly the breaking of gender roles. Therefore i would like to propose a third, more gender neutral version that follows the same rules,

[gophergal]

a meme specific to my interpretations

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Shermer

Published: Jun 21, 2024

In my book Why People Believe Weird Things I offered this definition of how science works:

Science is a set of methods designed to describe and interpret observed or inferred phenomenon, past or present, aimed at building a testable body of knowledge open to rejection or confirmation

That is, science is something we do, an action, a verb, to describe what we see in the lab or field or world, or interpret what we think we see, since the facts never just speak for themselves but must be interrupted through some model or theory (facts are “theory laden”). Sometimes we see things directly, but sometimes we must infer their presence indirectly, for example, exo-planets are inferred by their effects on their home star, either by the perturbation of the star’s motion or by the amount of emitted light that dims when the planet passes in front of it that astronomers can detect. Because many sciences are historical in nature—cosmology, geology, paleontology, archaeology, and history—we have to infer information about them from indirect sources. To put this mouthful more briefly:

Science is a method to explain the world that is testable and open to change.

My favorite rendition of this process comes from a 1964 lecture at Cornell University by the Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman:

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.

Is that all there is to it? In this week’s Skeptic column a scholar of Karl Popper, Eric Denton, considers this question, in the context of what happens when people do not understand how science works, as evidenced by Tucker Carlson’s recent appearance on Joe Rogan when he revealed his ignorance about the theory of evolution.

—Michael Shermer

Eric Denton is a writer and podcaster whose primary focus is epistemology; in particular, Popperian epistemology. He separates the wheat from the chaff by subjecting popular science and philosophical writings to severe criticism. His mission is to promulgate critical rationalism to his readers and listeners. Eric is currently working on a book which revolves around the work of Sir Karl Popper.

--

By: Eric Denton

Tucker Carlson, Karl Popper, and How Science Really Works

Eric Denton 

“Theories (scientific or otherwise) are trials, inventions; they are not the results of many observations; they are not derived from many data.”

—Karl Popper, All Life Is Problem Solving

On the April 23, 2024 episode of the wildly popular podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, former preppy now turned populist right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson confidently declared that “the theory of evolution as articulated by Darwin is like, kinda not true.” 

“In what sense?” asked a bemused Joe Rogan.

“Well, in the most basic sense,” Carlson continued. “The idea that—you know—all life emerged from a single organism and overtime—and—there would be a fossil record of that and there’s not.” 

Rogan interjected by mentioning the existence of transitional fossils; fossils exhibiting adaptations to particular environments.

Carlson quickly appropriated this explanation for his own ends: “there’s tons of record of adaptation and you see it, in your own life. I mean, I have a lot of dogs—I see adaptation in dogs….” He rambled on a bit more before concluding, “but no, there’s no evidence at all that—none—zero—that, you know, people, you know, evolved seamlessly from a single cell amoeba; no, there’s not—there’s not—there’s no chain in the fossil record of that at all.”

I’m afraid Carlson’s blathering is demonstrative of how a great many people think about the methods of science and the growth of knowledge. Like him, multitudes think we acquire knowledge through our senses. This is false. But before continuing, let me supplement this claim with a quote from the philosopher of science Karl Popper’s book The Logic of Scientific Discovery, “I readily admit that only observation can give us ‘knowledge concerning facts’, [here Popper is quoting philosopher Hans Hahn] and that we can ‘become aware of facts only by observation’.” But then Popper reflects, “but this awareness, this knowledge of ours, does not justify or establish the truth of any statement.” So, to be sure, we can learn facts using our senses—unjustified tentative facts—but this isn’t where knowledge comes from. 

On November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin introduced what philosopher Daniel Dennett would later call the “best idea anyone has ever had.” This idea was the theory of evolution by natural selection. “In a single stroke,” Dennett asserts in his book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, “the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning, and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law.” The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins waxes eloquent about the simplicity and elegance of natural selection in his book The Blind Watchmaker, following up with a curious question, “how could such a simple idea go so long undiscovered by thinkers of the caliber of Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, Hume and Aristotle?” I’ve often asked this myself.

A couple of centuries before Darwin, in 1610, Galileo Galilei observed, among other things, the phases of Venus (shadows caused by its relation to the sun) through his newly improved homemade telescope, thereby corroborating the heliocentric theory of our solar system; a theory put forth by Nicolaus Copernicus about a half century earlier. With this discovery—in the minds of many—we had finally found the key to making scientific progress: observation! It seemed as if Galileo had simply pointed his telescope at Venus, observed it circling the sun, and voilà, the truth was revealed. But is this what really happened? I’ll argue below that this is mistaken. But first we need context.

About a decade after the corroboration of the heliocentric theory, the philosopher Francis Bacon independently put forth a scientific method that vaguely resembled what Galileo had done. Or at least it seemed so under indiscriminate viewing. His method proposed that, in order to make scientific progress, we must derive general theories from specific observations. For example, if—up to now—you’ve only ever come across white swans in your life, according to Bacon’s method you can logically deduce that all swans are white; you notice a pattern, then derive a theory. “We must not imagine or invent,” Bacon writes in his book Novum Organum, “but discover….”

[ The title page illustration of Francis Bacon’s Novum Organum ]

In other words, we simply allow knowledge to enter our brains through our senses. Sound familiar? This is precisely how Tucker Carlson demonstrated his method of understanding the natural world. “I see adaptation in dogs,” he said. From this he forms the theory that adaptation is “clearly, obviously true,” but then says “there’s no evidence at all that… people… evolved seamlessly from a single cell amoeba.” Notice that he easily accepts adaptation (which, ironically, is a result of natural selection), but refuses to accept the full theory; all this because he didn’t see it happen.

Before returning to Italy with Galileo, let’s first revisit this statement by Bacon. Here it is in full:

We must not imagine or invent, but discover the acts and properties of nature.

This statement is somewhat paradoxical because it does indeed take us two steps forward, but it also takes us one step back. Two steps forward because it abandons traditional authorities (which is a good thing); one step back because it sets up a new authority, namely, our senses. Wait, our senses can be an authority? No, but that’s what they became under many early thinkers. This kind of reasoning is what legitimized the flat earth theory for so long. For example, if you had a time machine and traveled back in time to the 14th century and asked any number of people why they thought the earth was flat, perplexed, they would answer with their own question: “does it look curved?”

Quick but critical digression: the “white swan” proposition mentioned above comes from the 19th century philosopher John Stuart Mill in his book A System of Logic. In it, Mill points out the major flaw in the Baconian method; the fact that it will never be able to give us certainty:

To Europeans, not many years ago, the proposition, all swans are white, appeared an equally unequivocal instance of uniformity in the course of nature. Further experience has proved to both that they were mistaken; but they had to wait fifty centuries for this experience. During that long time, mankind believed in a uniformity of the course of nature where no such uniformity really existed.

This is an extremely important finding in the study of knowledge. It was first noticed by the Ancient Greek skeptical philosophers but took nearly two thousand more years before being neatly articulated by the Scottish philosopher David Hume in his book A Treatise of Human Nature. “We suppose, but are never able to prove, that there must be a resemblance betwixt those objects, of which we have had experience, and those which lie beyond the reach of our discovery.” No matter how many white swans you may come across in your life, there’s always the possibility that a black swan might be sitting on an undiscovered island in the middle of the ocean. 

[ David Hume by Allan Ramsay, 1766 ]

Now that we have some context surrounding our “senses as an authority” problem, let’s reexamine Galileo and his Venus observations. In his book, Galileo: Watcher of the Skies, historian David Wootton describes a letter Johannes Kepler received from Galileo in 1597 in which “he made a most remarkable claim.” After revealing he had been a Copernican for quite a while, Galileo writes of the heliocentric theory, “with this hypothesis [I] have been able to explain many natural phenomena, which under the current hypothesis remain unexplainable.” This conflict of theories was a problem, but as Karl Popper writes, “the natural as well as the social sciences always start from problems…” He continues, “seeing a new problem may well be the most difficult step in creating a new theory.” I take this as Popper indicating how much of a gift finding a problem truly is. When we find a problem we should cherish it. From the same book, All Life Is Problem Solving, Popper outlines the growth of knowledge as follows: 

The starting point is always a problem or a problem situation.

Attempted solutions then follow. These consist of theories, and these theories, being trials, are very often wrong: they are and always will be hypotheses or conjectures.

In science, too, we learn by eliminating our mistakes, by eliminating our false theories.

[ Sir Karl Popper in the 1980s. ]

In short, all knowledge creation is through trial and error. More specifically, trial and the elimination of error, always with the understanding that we can never be certain that we’ve landed on the truth. We proceed not with certain knowledge, but with good explanations. What are those? Here, the theoretical physicist David Deutsch provides a helpful addendum to Popper’s work with a definition from his book The Beginning of Infinity: a good explanation is “an explanation that is hard to vary while still accounting for what it purports to account for.” Put differently, “God did it” is a bad explanation because it can be used to describe anything.

Given this, what really happened with Galileo and his telescope? As previously noted, he started with a problem; a conflict between two theories. Notice that Galileo already had a theory in mind before he made his observation:; the Copernican theory. This will always be the case. “There is no such thing as ‘raw’ experience,” writes Deutsch; “all our experience of the world comes through layers of conscious and unconscious interpretation.” Or as Popper is supposed to have said, “all observation is theory-laden.”

The predominant theory of Galileo’s time was geocentrism, put forth by the 2nd century astronomer Claudius Ptolemy, asserting that the Sun, the Moon, and the stars all circle the earth. Ptolemy’s was a complex model involving different epicycles. He came to this mistaken hypothesis by the false authority of his senses—by looking at the movement of the heavens and attempting to describe what he saw. Galileo on the other hand observed Venus (a wondering dot in the sky conjectured to be a planet) with having both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican theories in mind. Long story short, the Copernican theory simply made more sense than the common-sense theory put forth by Ptolemy. But as Deutsch notes in The Fabric of Reality, “our best theories are not only truer than common sense, they make more sense than common sense.” Common sense is just another way of describing the Baconian method.

[ Pages from 1550 Annotazione on Sacrobosco's De sphaera mundi, showing the Ptolemaic system. ]

This brings us back to Darwin. How did he come up with the theory of evolution by natural selection? He did exactly what Bacon said not to do, he imagined and invented! As with the creation of all knowledge, he didn’t start with an observation, but with a problem. What was his problem? It was the “mystery of mysteries,” as he describes it in the Origin, alluding to a phrase first uttered by the naturalist John Herschel, who was referring to precisely the same problem: what is the origin of species? The prevailing theory in Darwin’s day was standard biblical creationism, bracketed by Plato’s essentialism. Darwin himself held this view before encountering a conflict between his theory and his observation. The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr describes this conflict in his introduction to Origin’s facsimile:

Three sets of observations, in particular, impressed Darwin: that fossils from South America are related to the living fauna of that continent rather than to contemporaneous fossils from everywhere; that the faunas of the different climatic zones of South America are related to each other, rather than to animals of the same climatic zone on different continents; and, most important, that the faunas of islands (Falkland, Galapagos) are related to those of the nearest mainland and that related species occur on different islands of the same archipelago.

When one is faced with a situation like this—a problem situation—one has to start making guesses as to how to fix it. That’s precisely what Darwin did. He had never seen anything like natural selection before, he simply made a guess. The theory of natural selection didn’t enter his brain through his senses. Rather, it left his brain through his senses. More specifically, it was created between his ears and left through his hands and mouth. Nature doesn’t create laws and impose them on us. Instead, we create laws and apply them to nature. Are these laws true? We can never know for certain. Again, laws fall under knowledge, and all explanatory knowledge is conjectural, a “best” guess as it were. 

And that brings us back to Tucker Carlson, who finished his rant against Darwinism by claiming: “Darwin’s theory is [totally untrue]. That’s why it’s still a theory.” Despite such ignorance, Carlson actually gets something right with this last statement. Natural selection is indeed still a theory and will remain so unless it gets overthrown by a new theory, a better theory. If this were to happen, the new theory would also remain just a theory—perennially tentative and subject to revision based on new information or analyses.

In his book The Greatest Show On Earth, Richard Dawkins takes great pains to combat the “just a theory” claim. In order to do so, he fights tooth and nail the very philosophy I’ve been speaking of this whole time: “As for the claim that evolution has never been ‘proved’, proof is a notion that scientists have been intimidated into mistrusting. Influential philosophers tell us we can’t prove anything in science.” Nevertheless, Dawkins lands the philosophical plane: “The more energetically and thoroughly you try to disprove a theory, if it survives the assault, the more closely it approaches what common sense happily calls a fact.” That said, to reiterate, knowledge can never be certain. Popper explains it like this:

The empirical basis of objective science has thus nothing “absolute” about it. Science does not rest upon rock-bottom. The bold structure of its theories rises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or “given” base; and when we cease our attempts to drive our piles into a deeper layer, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that they are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.

My guess is that thinkers such as Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Leibnitz, Hume, and Aristotle—the thinkers mentioned by Dawkins above—didn’t land on natural selection because of its abstract nature. The common sense of their day was far too strong to overthrow. They were afraid to step into the land of best guesses where the only thing that matters is the falsifiability of a theory (that is, it can be put to some test and shown to be wrong), not its verifiability (simply finding more cases where it appears to hold true). It’s not surprising that Darwin sat on his “dangerous” idea for so long before publishing. Its sheer boldness is breathtaking. And it is only through such boldness that makes science progress—by testing bold and seemingly improbable ideas. 

==

Tucker Carlson is an abject fucking moron.

[grumpyghostdoodles]

I love your Asriel design, he is very handsome, he and Clover is very cutesy 💛💛💛

They are so stupid

[jesuis-assez]

↠ Tim & Lucy ↳ 2x01 - Impact

[nimbusclan]

Moon 3, Part 2

[Previous] [Start] [Next]

Without a second of hesitation, Moonpaw takes off over the mountain, mouth open to follow Fogpaw’s scent as her paws fly over the rocks. Her legs are screaming, but adrenaline overpowers her exhaustion.

“Fogpaw?” She yowls. “Fogpaw!”

“I’m here.” Fogpaw’s voice sounds from somewhere nearby, strained but blessedly alive. Moonpaw turns in the direction of the sound and darts around the edge of an outcropping of rock, freezing as the sour scent of blood fills her nostrils.

“Fogpaw?”

“I told you, I’m right here,” He hisses. He’s half on the ground, struggling to pull himself to his paws, so Moonpaw goes to press her body to his to help him up. His pale fur is stained and streaked with blood from long gashes that mar his flank and there are clumps of fur stuck between his claws.

“What happened to you?” Moonpaw is terrified. The scent of blood reminds her of her last night at home and she struggles not to gag. “It smells like other cats.”

“It was other cats,” he spits, leaning heavily on her as she guides them back towards where she first spotted the rabbit. He limps, wincing with each step. “Remember those cats we met up with at the border? They’re using our hunting grounds.” Fogpaw’s voice shakes with anger. “I confronted them, but they said we don’t have a clan anymore which means that the territory is theirs. They said that if I tried to stop them, they’d make me pay. Well,” he laughs humorlessly, “I tried, but there were too many of them. I’m lucky that what little honor they have left was enough to stop them from killing me.”

Thank StarClan. She can’t lose her brother, too. He’s the only thing she has left. “You’re too reckless,” Moonpaw scolds. Fogpaw’s muzzle twists into a scowl, but he doesn’t deny it. “We have to leave, Fogpaw. We need to find somewhere new. We can rebuild NimbusClan, but it can’t be here.”

He looks at her, his eyes going wide and round. Slowly, a determined sheen comes over them. “Alright. Lead the way, Moonpaw.”

[Previous] [Start] [Next]

[mothfulhansel]

i drew another chimera sanji btw i thought yall would like to know maybe ill draw even more who knows

[luidilovins]

[satosktty]

sukugo where sukuna was in-love with a heian era six-eyes user.

they fought, he watched his partner cry for he had no tears to spill. it was the closest thing sukuna's ever had to an equal, but sukuna is still just a curse among humans

he eats his partner and carries the strength his dear lended him to their last breath with a heavy heart. he's faced others since then and his mind has pushed those memories aside like it would do for any other human and sukuna hates it

thousands of years later sukuna meets his reinarcanted lover now as satoru. satoru however doesn't see sukuna the same way, he doesn't have the same gentle words ( to sukuna atleast ) that ryomen's past lover would murmur endlessly. he's a tease, as if any possible higher diety has sent down the odd-acting man to mock the memory of his lover

sukuna starts to lose his mind over it and can't help but want to kill satoru regardless of how a great an opponent the man is. it's simply too much. then he sees how satoru is with his students, how much he tries and it hurts that he knows his past-lover was exactly like that

tldr; sukuna goes through an entire spiral and his mental takes a full on decline over dead-wife syndrome

[feroluce]

Learned recently that the Xianzhou Luofu apparently uses a different script than Belobog and that's so cool, I love little worldbuilding things like that. ♡

And then I nearly keeled over imagining Gepard going for a daytrip with Caelus and Asta to the Luofu; Caelus is taking Asta so she can run errands (and go shopping, of course) and Gepard is tagging along because Bronya found out he'd been falsifying records about his paid time off-

(Bronya: You have two years of overdue pto?! Out!

Gepard: But-

Bronya: Go on vacation or something! Out!!)

-and. It's all a little overwhelming for poor Geppie.

Everything is so weird and different there. A part of him is curious and enjoys it, but he just doesn't really have that same pioneering spirit as his sisters and it's not as fun for him as it would be for them. He wishes they hadn't been busy and could've come along, he'd feel a lot better with Serval and Lynx. He can't even read most of the script, he's mostly reliant on Caelus and Asta or the translation function they put on his phone for him. He kind of just wants to go home. He misses his city.

And then he catches sight of a head of blue hair in the corner of his eye, snickering and messing with the script on one of the signs.

Gepard: Wh- You!?!?

Sampo: !!! :D

Sampo grins wide and darts off, Gepard launches after him out of habit, and somehow, even with Gepard being new and alien to the Luofu, Sampo always seems to stay juuuuuuust within sight, just close enough not to lose him or get lost completely.

Gepard is lead all the way out near the starskiff building grounds when he finally has to stop, because Sampo somehow scales the damn wall like a nasty little lizard, gets all the way to the top, then winks at him over the roof and tells him he'll see him later, have fun, give Serval a kiss for him back home!! Gepard flips him off even though Sampo has already turned around and left skxjkdkdmfkf

But then he finally sits down and looks around him and realizes that oh. He feels kind of. Better now. More on even footing. Stable ground. There's no snow, but the high steel walls and corridors here are more familiar to him than all the wide open space and brightly colored buildings of the main tourist section he'd been in. The background hum is quieter and gentler here, and it reminds him more of Serval's shop, as opposed to Starskip Alley's throngs of chattering people and fast-flying ships. The little pangs that made his chest feel hollow have eased up. ♡

Caelus, carrying a Certain Courier Package: ...We've heard from him, yeah.))

((Asta: Sorry it took us so long to get out here! I found this sword that Arlan would like and-

Gepard: It's fine, don't worry about it. Hey, did you know Koski is running around out here?