What are Laws of Nature?

[Jehanne]

I suspect he makes the distinction because he refuse to let go of propositions that no information, upon careful analysis, would support.

So in practical sense, his concept of knowledge can be summarized as made up bullshit attractive to him that, as a result,  must never be let go.

He believes in Revelation, that is, in revealed knowledge. Problem is that no one can agree on those sorts of things.

[The Grand Nudger]

Well, look...we don't know that a person bashed in the face with a baseball bat will bleed profusely from the nose and mouth..it's just something that maybe happens.

If only we had a gods eye view! If we decide that nothing short of that thing (whatever it is) counts as Real Knowledge - there's very little point in having (or contending to have) a conversation about anything allegedly premised on any knowledge.

[polymath257]

First, let's separate the sciences that study humans from those that do not.

For the sciences that do not, are the conclusions invalidated because women are under-represented in the sciences?

I would say not, although because of lack of diversity (and thereby for alternative explanations), the progress will be slower. Any time intelligent people are excluded from participating, the progress of science will slow. But, I also believe the correct conclusions eventually arise, are tested, and are accepted.

It should be pointed out that new ideas in science are *always* challenged and 'put through a wringer'. That is how it should be and does not, in and of itself, represent bias. It is important that the new ideas be challenged, compared to available evidence, be subject to criticism (even harsh criticism), etc. This is how science is, and should be done. And it is true for men who propose new ideas (Gould and Eldridge for Punctuated Equilibria come to mind) as it is for women and other groups.

For those sciences that *do* study humans, the male bias is much more pronounced and dangerous. Again, lack of diversity is the basic problem, along with the default assumption that 'all people are like me'. Because of this, situations where men and women differ in their responses (diseases, social responsibilities, etc) will not be studied in the ways necessary for the correct application to women. As your articles point out, the health of women is harmed by this bias. But, in the same way, the health of those of under-represented races is also harmed for the same reasons.

These are situations where, because the studies are not suitably designed, the conclusions derived can be wrong and dangerous for those not part of the study. To some degree, it comes down to realizing that race or gender can be a relevant factor for care.

But let's be clear. The basic ideas of science: that we need to test our ideas and challenge them in as many cases as possible, and that conclusions should always be seen as current approximations are *still* good and required. The problem comes when biases mean we don't test as fully as we should or consider alternatives when we should.

But the scientific method itself isn't gender dependent, nor race dependent.

I just can't imagine a more unrealistic and ivory-tower conception of scientific inquiry. 

This idea that we can just silo off the macho "hard sciences" like physics that deal with the absolute truth of how reality is from those "soft sciences" where we're dealing with human beings being human is just way too convenient for my liking. You're still dealing with historically and culturally embedded agents conducting research in institutional contexts where there's politics, funding, vested interests, reputations and prestige at stake. Women and minorities are at a disadvantage in the world of the sciences in the same way as they are elsewhere in society: straight white men have long been the ones to establish cultural, institutional, and industry consensus, and they have been socialized to identify challenges to these consensus realities as threats to the social order rather than intriguing opportunities for progress.

I'm afraid I don't look at science through the same rose-colored glasses you do. We can teach schoolchildren that "the correct conclusions eventually arise, are tested, and are accepted," but anyone who understands the history and philosophy of science realizes that there are many other factors that influence which questions are asked, who gets to ask them, and what qualifies as a correct conclusion than the disinterested and noble quest for Truth.

I don't see that hard sciences as being 'macho'. They are simply more tested and reliable.

Too often in the 'soft' sciences, the numbers involved in the studies are not nearly enough to give a high degree of reliability to the studies. let's face it, a standard significance level of p<.05 is crazy. For any serious consideration, it should be more like p<.0001 or less.

But my point was the those that study humans are more likely to be harmed by the biases because they are studying humans. That means that the biases are much more likely to be due to ego, societal assumptions, and political positioning. That means that conclusions that are not actually supported are more likely to get adopted and taught as 'science' when they are not actually supported by the scientific method.

And yes, the issues with representation in the sciences is a reflection of a larger societal problem with long historical roots. And that lack of diversity has, indeed, slowed the progress of science because of its exclusion of intelligent and qualified individuals, including the denial of appropriate educational opportunities. The society as a whole is far worse off because of those societal biases.

But do I think that being female gave Barbara McClintock any insights unavailable to men? No. Do I think that being female meant that Rosalind Franklin did science in a fundamentally different way than those who society gave awards? No. Do I think that being female gave Mary Ellen Rudin any special insights into set theory unavailable to men? No. Their intellectual abilities were simply independent of their gender.

Now, the societal biases meant that they did not get the accolades they deserved (although McClintock did get a Nobel Prize and Rudin was widely known as a top mathematician, Franklin was unconscionably passed by). But that is very different than the correctness of their science and thought.

---

I suspect he makes the distinction because he refuse to let go of propositions that no information, upon careful analysis, would support.

So in practical sense, his concept of knowledge can be summarized as made up bullshit attractive to him that, as a result,  must never be let go.

He believes in Revelation, that is, in revealed knowledge.  Problem is that no one can agree on those sorts of things.

And so it simply isn't knowledge.

[HappySkeptic]

I'm afraid I don't look at science through the same rose-colored glasses you do. We can teach schoolchildren that "the correct conclusions eventually arise, are tested, and are accepted," but anyone who understands the history and philosophy of science realizes that there are many other factors that influence which questions are asked, who gets to ask them, and what qualifies as a correct conclusion than the disinterested and noble quest for Truth.

Are you trashing science just because it clashes with your existential views?  You don't sound much different from the theists that try to denigrate science because it clashes with their religious beliefs.

This is clearly a philosophy discussion, and not a science one.  I have studied the philosophy of science, and I understand its limitations.

Yes, 100 years ago, women in science rarely got credit for their work.  For that matter, anyone who wasn't a primary researcher often had their credit stolen.  There are examples of people coming up with bullshit theories about race, gender, and doing bad science to justify their biases.  Funding can skew the type of research that gets done in a politically-friendly direction.

That has nothing to do with the actual things we've learned.  The current set of scientific "knowledge" is incomplete and has errors.  Good scientists know that.  It doesn't change the fact that theories continue to get better at providing a framework to predict nature.

Physics is undergoing a resurgence, despite us knowing a heck of a lot about reality.  Dark matter, dark energy, black hole information paradox, quantum gravity, the nature of the big bang -- all these are open to smart people coming up with all sorts of new and testable ideas.

[The Grand Nudger]

I don't see that hard sciences as being 'macho'. They are simply more tested and reliable.

Too often in the 'soft' sciences, the numbers involved in the studies are not nearly enough to give a high degree of reliability to the studies. let's face it, a standard significance level of p<.05 is crazy. For any serious consideration, it should be more like p<.0001 or less.

But my point was the those that study humans are more likely to be harmed by the biases because they are studying humans. That means that the biases are much more likely to be due to ego, societal assumptions, and political positioning. That means that conclusions that are not actually supported are more likely to get adopted and taught as 'science' when they are not actually supported by the scientific method.

Bias attacks from the front and rear in social sciences.  It's not just the biases of the observers, but the biases of the subjects making reports - and not just the biases of males.  However....we don't think that the moon, for example, is conspiring to or suffering from human biases by presenting itself as a particular size.

---

Just to continue along with that - we might attempt to reconstruct the circumstances and psychology of pagan religious practices as an issue of academic interest. To do so..however, we have three main points of reference distributed into two groups of extant people or sources (by and large). The contemporized points of view of modern people ( pagan and otherwise) - the reports of christianized monks, and the silent or quasi silent historical pagans, themselves - both the subject of inquiry and a mute party to the same.

As to whether or not these things are accounted for - our simple knowledge of their existence compellingly suggests otherwise. The only debate is to whether they're adequately accounted for, and the consensus amongst social scientists in this regard is not only that they aren't - but that they literally cannot be - largely due to no3.

Pursuant to all of this, we can see that human sacrifice, whatever it was, was emphatically not an issue of people doing bad things for bad reasons. It was not maladjustment or disordered thought. Consequently, we can determine that it did not take a sick or unwell human being to engage in such practices or even volunteer as a sacrifice, despite all later protestations to the contrary arising from cultural and historical bias. Even the idea that the "soft sciences" are not sufficiently scientific is a relic of the past. Nowadays, when people want to know whether or not a group of pagans were bloodthristy savages -or- whether a ragtag judeans wandered the desert for forty years - they do the work.

Turns out, they weren't...and they didn't - and you can assign whatever level of certitude you have towards the size of the moon towards that in equal measure. I'd even go so far as to say that poly, in his own way, is subject to the biases of the past (and not without reason) when it comes to the very idea of so-called soft science. The "hard sciences" reliably predict the outcome of the rocket, the soft sciences reliably predict human response to said rocket to a stunning degree of accuracy, as measured by the entire industry of predicting and leveraging human response for profit. That we have many potential responses to a single inculcating event clouds that realization, but it's there nevertheless.

It's certainly true that alot of what we thought we knew about the prehistoric world is upended by, say, LIDAR - but I don't expect to see poly arguing against the conclusions that people might arrive at about prehistoric peoples on the basis of LIDAR data, no matter how divergent they may be from notions thought to be settled before it's use. Turns out that many prehistoric settlements were orders of magnitude larger than we thought by just kicking up dirt and referring back to magic book. That's consequential, just as the change in methodology from bible and spade to observational data and physical experimentation was consequential. Turns out..if you really wanna know about early people..you shoud invest in some scuba gear and be ready to make exhaustively well documented dives over and over again. On and on and on.

[Belacqua]

So no matter how many science-fan clichés he writes about how science is so rigorously self-critical and inevitably reaches the correct conclusion, and no matter how many legitimate criticisms about the exclusion and marginalization faced by women and minorities in science that he handwaves away with noble rhetoric about how unbiased and objective science is, according to you I should just assume that he means the exact opposite of the words he's typing and that he has a much more nuanced understanding of the social and cultural context of science than his words describe?

He proves the truth of the remark you made which began this discussion: 

Some people who don't believe in God nonetheless believe in a God's-eye-view of the universe. Total, objective, unbiased Truth, brought to you by science, right around the corner. 

Not the viewpoint of one insignificant species on a small planet, but Truth.

[Jehanne]

Human sacrifice is a modern development, not a prehistoric one. Prehistoric peoples did not engage in ritualistic sacrifices, just infanticide and senilicide.

[Anomalocaris]

no, some people who don’t believe in god believe human eyes can be trained to see the universe less subjectively.

everything else belacqua said is same old use worn belacquan disingenuous bullshit.

[vulcanlogician]

If a tree falls in the forest (on earth) and there are no humans around does it make a sound?

A decibel meter says yes. Not everything is a head game.

(somebody please move this to philosophy, that's  where it's headed)

I always appreciate what you have to say on such matters, Brew. You always pick solid, defensible positions. Normally, I'd offer some counterpoints to what you say, but I've come to think you perceive such conversations as me "antagonizing you with philosophy" rather than me scrutinizing your position and offering counterpoints. I don't really want to antagonize you (or anyone else) with these discussions. I just want to examine these topics with interested parties. I don't apologize for the level of scrutiny I provide, but neither do I fault anyone who says, "To me, this isn't a worthwhile discussion."


And, yeah, this discussion would be at home in the philosophy subforum. But a lot of things that are placed in semi-related subforums could be also be placed in the philosophy subforum, to be fair. Especially for politics. I think this topic relates reasonably enough to the physical sciences to be put here. It's about something we have in physics (laws of nature). But, whatever. It's cool if this gets moved to the philosophy subforum.

[brewer]

If a tree falls in the forest (on earth) and there are no humans around does it make a sound?

A decibel meter says yes. Not everything is a head game.

(somebody please move this to philosophy, that's  where it's headed)

I always appreciate what you have to say on such matters, Brew. You always pick solid, defensible positions. Normally, I'd offer some counterpoints to what you say, but I've come to think you perceive such conversations as me "antagonizing you with philosophy" rather than me scrutinizing your position and offering counterpoints. I don't really want to antagonize you (or anyone else) with these discussions. I just want to examine these topics with interested parties. I don't apologize for the level of scrutiny I provide, but neither do I fault anyone who says, "To me, this isn't a worthwhile discussion."


And, yeah, this discussion would be at home in the philosophy subforum. But a lot of things that are placed in semi-related subforums could be also be placed in the philosophy subforum, to be fair. Especially for politics. I think this topic relates reasonably enough to the physical sciences to be put here. It's about something we have in physics (laws of nature). But, whatever. It's cool if this gets moved to the philosophy subforum.

No big deal but just call a spade a spade. If you don't think its philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/laws-of-nature/

And you're correct, I don't want to be part of a discussion of what is considered as a law of nature. That's a philosophical discussion that I simply have little stomach for.