Why is science treated like something magical, mythical, enchanted, etc.?

[IstillBELIEVEinPOMO]

I disagree. Seems to me the 'magical thinking' you're talkin' about is at the heart of scientism (sumthin' I say several times, in different ways, in the other thread).

I just now read that entire thread from beginning to end and nothing in it answers the question in this thread.

Scientism is, basically, epistemological extremism. It says that only the hard, natural sciences tell us anything about the real world. Therefore, if you want to be taken seriously, you had better be scientific and support your position with science. Consequently, disciplines such as philosophy and sociology try to look and act like the hard, natural sciences as much as they can. Consequently, both climate change alarmists and climate change deniers use science to support their position. Etc.

Scientism is kind of like Occam's Razor on steroids. It says that physics explains everything or will eventually explain everything so we shouldn't waste time and other resources on history, archaeology, philosophy, languages/linguistics, music theory, sociology, psychology, human geography, etc.

None of that explains why people assign magical, mythical, enchanted qualities to what amounts to nothing more than making observations, taking measurements, manipulating material, and constructing models with symbols.

[henry quirk]

"None of that explains why people assign magical, mythical, enchanted qualities to what amounts to nothing more than making observations, taking measurements, manipulating material, and constructing models with symbols."

But that's the heart of scientism: taking a fine method and turning it into comforting dogma.

It's an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that we want the world to make sense. The practice of science doesn't promise to bring order to seeming chaos. Science only investigates. Some folks, desperate to understand, layer atop science all the 'magical thinking' you point at. It's not enough for the folks to to simply appreciate the world and live with questions and uncertainty; they elevate the practice and method of science to holy writ, taking comfort in the promise of salvation (that all questions will be answered, all puzzles solved, that the proper way to 'be' will be handed to them).

This is religion, and religion is all about the ecstatic.

[Greta]

Rather, it is the role of religion to blind us from the wonders of nature to focus on dull obsessive anthropocentrism.

This anthropocentric view narrows human focus. It's an adaptation that came about to keep humans focused on competing and contributing to the group rather than being helplessly spellbound by the miracles that are and surround us - which is what would happen if we had the senses and attention to perceive reality as it is rather than the religion-diluted abstracted version most usually noticed.

And now people are helplessly spellbound by a "method" that a few humans in one part of the world in one brief moment in time came up with.

Yet you accuse people who lived all over the globe before that "method" of being pathetically ethnocentric and anthropocentric.

You have not countered the point I made here. not even a bit.

Try again or concede.

[QuantumT]

This is a direct reply to the opening post. I haven't read the rest.

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That's just how we're built. We need leaders, someone to look up to. To show us the way. Up to a few centuries ago, those leaders were our priests, now more and more replace those priests with famous scientists. Because they address the same issues. Existentialism, truth vs lies and good vs bad.

Our need for those things will never go away, so scientists might as well get used to their roles as modern priests.

[A_Seagull]

. But no opportunity is ever missed to remind us of the breathtaking superiority of science compared to those alternatives.

What alternatives?

[surreptitious57]

Science is the study of observable phenomena through the rigorous employment of the scientific method
Scientism is the view that science can potentially answer every question including all non scientific ones

They are therefore entirely different to each other
Scientism is dogmatic whereas science is inductive

[TimeSeeker]

From the paradigm of physical information ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information ) science is applied information theory (Shannon, 1948). Falsification is a physical law of the universe. A measurement which collapses 1 qubit of epistemic certainty into a 1 classical 'false' bit.

[Atla]

From the paradigm of physical information ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information ) science is applied information theory (Shannon, 1948). Falsification is a physical law of the universe. A measurement which collapses 1 qubit of epistemic certainty into a 1 classical 'false' bit.

Shannon information is just a more flexible conceptualization than matter/energy. Why would falsification be a physical law of the universe, and what does your last sentence mean?

[TimeSeeker]

From the paradigm of physical information ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information ) science is applied information theory (Shannon, 1948). Falsification is a physical law of the universe. A measurement which collapses 1 qubit of epistemic certainty into a 1 classical 'false' bit.

Shannon information is just a more flexible conceptualization than matter/energy. Why would falsification be a physical law of the universe, and what does your last sentence mean?

Well, sure. Like calculus is a more flexible conception of change. Since conception is all we have - it is very useful.

The falsification criterion is about information.

There exists a single measurement which can contradict your current model (understanding).

All swans are white can be represented as a qubit. A probability distribution. For every white swan you observe the probability of your hypothesis being true approaches 1 (but never really gets there). After 99 observed white swans the probability is 0.99. After 9999 white swans the probability is 0.9999.

The moment you observe even one black swan the distribution collapses into a classical bit. 0 (false).

Qubits measure epistemic uncertainty.

[Atla]

From the paradigm of physical information ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information ) science is applied information theory (Shannon, 1948). Falsification is a physical law of the universe. A measurement which collapses 1 qubit of epistemic certainty into a 1 classical 'false' bit.

Shannon information is just a more flexible conceptualization than matter/energy. Why would falsification be a physical law of the universe, and what does your last sentence mean?

Well, sure. Like calculus is a more flexible conception of change. Since conception is all we have - it is very useful.

The falsification criterion is about information.

There exists a single measurement which can contradict your current model (understanding).

All swans are white can be represented as a qubit. A probability distribution. For every white swan you observe the probability of your hypothesis being true approaches 1 (but never really gets there). After 99 observed white swans the probability is 0.99. After 9999 white swans the probability is 0.9999.

The moment you observe even one black swan the distribution collapses into a classical bit. 0 (false).

Qubits measure epistemic uncertainty.

Yeah the swan example is epistemic, but doesn't a physical law describe something directly ontological?

[TimeSeeker]

Yeah the swan example is epistemic, but doesn't a physical law describe something directly ontological?

From the paradigm of physical information ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information ) all descriptions are incomplete. They are reductions of the actual ontology. Models.

Newton's laws deal with mass/gravity but it omits (ignores) other information about the object: shape/size/color etc. The only "complete description" of an ontology is a perfect (bit-by-bit) replica.

And the instant you create such a replica it begins to diverge by the very fact it occupies a different coordinates in spacetime in respect to the 'original'.

In a somewhat general sense, the information of a given entity can be interpreted as its identity. As such, its information can be perceived to be the representation of the specification of its existence and thus, to be serving as the full description of each of the properties (real or potentialized) that are responsible for the entity’s existence. This description, of course, is one that, in a sense, is completely divorced from both any and all forms of language.

[Atla]

Yeah the swan example is epistemic, but doesn't a physical law describe something directly ontological?

From the paradigm of physical information ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information ) all descriptions are incomplete. They are reductions of the actual ontology. Models.

Newton's laws deal with mass/gravity but it omits (ignores) other information about the object: shape/size/color etc. The only "complete description" of an ontology is a perfect (bit-by-bit) replica.

And the instant you create such a replica it begins to diverge by the very fact it occupies a different coordinates in spacetime in respect to the 'original'.

In a somewhat general sense, the information of a given entity can be interpreted as its identity. As such, its information can be perceived to be the representation of the specification of its existence and thus, to be serving as the full description of each of the properties (real or potentialized) that are responsible for the entity’s existence. This description, of course, is one that, in a sense, is completely divorced from both any and all forms of language.

Yes but why would falsification (something epistemic) be a physical law of the universe (something ontological)?

[TimeSeeker]

Yes but why would falsification (something epistemic) be a physical law of the universe (something ontological)?

Because the "epistemic" and "ontological" taxonomies are arbitrary and we are allowed to discard them.

You are part of the universe - are you not? You attempt to acquire knowledge of the universe (and therefore - yourself)- do you not? To draw the epistemology/ontology distinction seems unnecessary. Your epistemology is the best (and always incomplete!) representation of the ontology. It's a model. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_map ... _territory

Knowledge-acquisition (learning) is all about information gathering/processing.

So what is a law if not a limit imposed on you by the environment? You can't levitate because gravity - but we can overcome this limit with technology. What limits are imposed on you in terms of learning?

Well - an exact replica of the universe requires X bits of information.
Your brain can only fit Y bits of information log(X/Y) is a VERY big number. Way bigger than the Kolmogorov complexity of the Universe.

And so - because it imposes a limit on your ability to acquire "complete knowledge" - it's a law (unless you can overcome it with technology).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogoro ... complexity

Or to say it simply: your epistemology is itself ontological! You store information in your ontological brain.

[Atla]

Yes but why would falsification (something epistemic) be a physical law of the universe (something ontological)?

Because the "epistemic" and "ontological" taxonomies are arbitrary and we are allowed to discard them.

You are part of the universe - are you not? You attempt to acquire knowledge of the universe (and therefore - yourself)- do you not? To draw the epistemology/ontology distinction seems unnecessary. Your epistemology is the best (and always incomplete!) representation of the ontology. It's a model. https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_map ... _territory

Except that falsification is not a representation of the ontology. Falsification is saying something about the representation of the ontology, it's saying something about the model. There is one more layer added there, do you see the difference?

Yes the map isn't the territory. And also, saying something about map isn't the map or the territory.

Based on your reasoning, pretty much anything we say about the world, is a physical law.

Knowledge-acquisition (learning) is all about information gathering/processing.

So what is a law if not a limit imposed on you by the environment? You can't levitate because gravity - but we can overcome this limit with technology. What limits are imposed on you in terms of learning?

I'm pretty sure that's not what a physical law means. I'm also not sure what you mean by information gathering/processing. You can't really gather/process something that's just an abstraction.

Well - an exact replica of the universe requires X bits of information.
Your brain can only fit Y bits of information log(X/Y) is a VERY big number. Way bigger than the Kolmogorov complexity of the Universe.

And so - because it imposes a limit on your ability to acquire "complete knowledge" - it's a law (unless you can overcome it with technology).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogoro ... complexity

Or to say it simply: your epistemology is itself ontological! You store information in your ontological brain.

Yeah but these aren't physical laws either. Maybe we just mean something else by physical law. Also, not sure what you mean by storing information; an abstraction itself can't be stored.

[TimeSeeker]

Except that falsification is not a representation of the ontology. Falsification is saying something about the representation of the ontology, it's saying something about the model. There is one more layer added there, do you see the difference?

It's saying that your epistemic model has been contradicted. It's wrong (because it's incomplete).
If your epistemic model was unfalsifiable then it necessarily means it's complete/perfect e.g an exact replica of the original.

Which is mathematically impossible given the current (un-augmented) capacity of your brain.

Also because you are a sub-set of the universe and therefore you can never have complete knowledge.

I'm pretty sure that's not what a physical law means. I'm also not sure what you mean by information gathering/processing. You can't really gather/process something that's just an abstraction.

And I am pretty sure I just gave you my definition. An unsurmountable limitation. A variable we can't control/manage.

Taking measurements through empirical means a.k.a uncertainty reduction is information gathering.

Also, not sure what you mean by storing information; an abstraction itself can't be stored.

Yes it can. An abstraction IS a reduction/model.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_compression

Here is a stored abstraction (lossy compression) of Earth: https://maps.google.com