On May 6, 10:54 pm, hru...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Herman Rubin) wrote:
> There is not just the problem of observations, but the
> inferences made from the observations. It is NOT the
> case that the observations determine the inferences made.
If you are higly skilled in objective thinking, you can make the basic
deductions right and so predict what even the UFOs must have known in
order to build the kind of space****ps that they do - IF they exist...
> In simple cases, it may appear that this is so, but when
> the cases are not so simple, good scientists can come up
> with widely divergent models. It is at this point that
> one can show that objectivity is not possible.
Objectivity IS possible, different people are just good at different
sides of it, maybe entirely bypassing the points that others rise.
When I was on a course in theoretical biology, there were two types of
models: complex ones including all the phenomena that were known to
affect things and simple ones with only the factors big enough to be
measured counted. The former brought much more understanding, the
latter were easier to verify by scientifical field experiments (they
were like descriptions of the data from field experiments) rather than
by common sense and long chains of deduction of what phenomena ought
to be there (i.e. deductions about what the world is like when
estimated in the light of ALL of our knowledge). Both were correct,
but the unfortunate thing is that they did not understand each other:
they were educated persons rather than thinking ones, so they failed
to notice what was not said explicitly: the different good sides of
these two methods, they suitedness to different things.
> This lack of objectivity is treated in statistical decision
> theory, and the answers are often that the answers are not
> easy. This is not learned by starting out with apparently
> simple cases, but by "plunging into the deep end."
In my opinion one should first figure out what there is in the
reality, what can be understood about it, rather than to claim that
nothing can be understood, so let's start with the obscure cases where
there is no way to verify your results against the real dynamics of
the world. Statistic just describes the average, the fluctuations and
the propability distributions of the individual occasions. Statistics
does not tell anything about the dynamics of the world, unless of
course that is born out of having great m***** of something, like
atoms or people for example, so one ought to start with simple
situations from which one can find the dynamics and then with that
knowledge count the statistical estimates of what will happen in
complex situations with a great number of factors affecting.
> Of course, one will need flotation devices and diving bells,
> and so the abstract concepts of logic, mathematics, probability,
> and "mathematical" statistics are needed. It is the concepts,
> not the ability to solve simple problems, which are im****tant.
> Knowing what addition means and when to use it is im****tant;
> knowing how to perform the addition is useful, but not very
> im****tant.
I have a very different view: What matters in thinking, is the forming
of a correct holistic picture of the world. Concepts are just tools
that we use to pay attention to certain charachteristics of the world.
In this I agree: it is good to know what kind of phenomena there are
in the world, for that concepts are good, but the final aim of
thinking, the only thing that matters is the forming of a good
holistic picture of the world. And that too is relavant only from the
point of view of being able to guide our actions, so putting things to
practise is very im****tant indeed!
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