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Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it is

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Speaker 1: Vault time. We're going into the vault for a classic

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode from September. And in

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Speaker 1: this episode, we explored a question about the nature of science.

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Speaker 1: Is there such a thing as post empirical science. A

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Speaker 1: lot of you science fans out there might be thinking,

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Speaker 1: what that sounds like an oxymoron, and it really does

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Speaker 1: kind of seem like an oxymoron. But there are some

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Speaker 1: people who would make a case otherwise, maybe some people

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Speaker 1: in the physics community, some people in the mathematics community.

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Speaker 1: And so we take a look at what it would

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Speaker 1: mean for a post empirical type of science to exist.

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Speaker 1: Does that idea even have any merit? Yeah, this is

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Speaker 1: an interesting one to revisit following our recent episodes on

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Speaker 1: black holes. I think yeah. So we hope you enjoyed

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Speaker 1: this episode about the nature of science. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I want

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Speaker 1: to put you in a scenario. All right, let's do it. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So just recently, I was at a family gathering, a

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Speaker 1: wedding and old family event. And when you go to

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Speaker 1: a you know, family reunion type event, you meet a

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Speaker 1: lot of people you haven't seen in a long time.

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Speaker 1: You get to catch up on what they're doing. So

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Speaker 1: imagine you are at a family reunion type event and

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Speaker 1: you're talking to a distant cousin of yours who's going

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Speaker 1: to night school to get her graduate degree. And you're like, oh, cool, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I do I do a science show. What are you

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Speaker 1: studying at your your school? And she could give you

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Speaker 1: a couple of answers. Let's contemplate the first one. The

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Speaker 1: first answer is, oh, I study radio astronomy. So we

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Speaker 1: look at distant objects in the sky by measuring the

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Speaker 1: radio frequency energy they admit. And you're like, cool, so

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Speaker 1: how does that work? And she says, so we aim

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Speaker 1: radio telescope arrays at far away stars and galaxies, and

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Speaker 1: we collect the data and faded into computers, and that

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Speaker 1: allows us to draw conclusions about the physical properties of

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Speaker 1: those objects. All right, sounds legit. Okay, here's another answer

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Speaker 1: she could give. She says, oh, yeah, I study psychic

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Speaker 1: astro sociology, so we study distant civilizations in the Milky

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Speaker 1: Way galaxy by tuning into the psychic energies that they

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Speaker 1: beam to our planet through their Numa transmitters. Okay, their

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Speaker 1: number of red flags already. Yeah, So you don't even

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Speaker 1: really have to be a scientist or even very scientifically

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Speaker 1: literate to tell that one of these answers refers to

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Speaker 1: real science and the other one does not. But the

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Speaker 1: question you should ask yourself is what is the criterion

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Speaker 1: you have used. You've intuitively used some kind of rule

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Speaker 1: to rule in one of those answers as real science

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Speaker 1: and rule out the other one as fake science pseudoscience.

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Speaker 1: It sounds like garbage. So you know the difference when

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Speaker 1: you see it, But what is the principle that actually

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Speaker 1: makes the difference? Right? And and this question becomes ever

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Speaker 1: more important when you when you move away from the

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Speaker 1: obvious examples and you get into that that stretch of

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Speaker 1: gray area, that that that borders the dividing line. Um. Now,

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Speaker 1: in terms of pseudoscience, I do want to throw in

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Speaker 1: real quick that the oldest known use of the word

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Speaker 1: pseudoscience dates back from when the historian James petite Andrew

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Speaker 1: referred to alchemy as quote a fantastical pseudoscience, And certainly

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Speaker 1: you can make that case for that with alchemy. Well

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Speaker 1: maybe if you have a close of mine, I'm going

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Speaker 1: to get some gold eventually. I mean, in some ways

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Speaker 1: alchemy was kind of a proto science. But the the

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Speaker 1: actual scientific properties in alchemy, and this is kind of

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Speaker 1: a topic for another day, um are kind of lost

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Speaker 1: amid all the the occult concerns. But in the philosophy

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Speaker 1: of science, exactly this problem, this problem of what rule

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Speaker 1: do you use to tell the difference between science and

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Speaker 1: pseudoscience has a name. It's a named problem, right, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the demarcation problem. Yeah, you're drawing the boundary, setting the

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Speaker 1: border between one side and the other, between truth and falsehood,

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Speaker 1: between good and bad, between sin and virtue. I mean

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Speaker 1: it and it sounds pretty simple, but it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a very important concern for the philosophy of science for

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Speaker 1: a couple of different reasons. From a purely theoretical point

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Speaker 1: of view, Uh, it's important philosophers talking to each other

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Speaker 1: about what things mean and the depth of their meaning.

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Speaker 1: But also from a very practical point it's because obviously

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Speaker 1: science is humanity's most reliable font of knowledge. It's the

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Speaker 1: tower we've built that we use to ascend to new heights. Uh,

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Speaker 1: technologically speaking, cosmologically speaking, it's our it's our best method

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Speaker 1: for advancing solutions, and something we're constantly touting in advertising, healthcare,

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Speaker 1: criminal justice, environmental policy, entertainment, politics, and everything in between. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so science is applied to science. Isn't just uh, intellectual

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Speaker 1: endeavor taking place in a vacuum. Once we have a

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Speaker 1: scientific conclusion, we very often take that conclusion out and

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Speaker 1: do something with it. Yeah, it's not just in the

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Speaker 1: monastery on the hill. It's down in the marketplace, it's

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Speaker 1: in the household. It's it's factoring in your decisions. I mean,

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Speaker 1: like we're saying earlier, it's one thing to to hear

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Speaker 1: someone's diet tribe about some very fringe e topic and

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Speaker 1: and instantly judge, oh, well, that's that's complete malarchy, that's pseudoscience.

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Speaker 1: But where it gets gets weirder is when you're picking

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Speaker 1: up a product at the super at the supermarket, you know,

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Speaker 1: or you're you're you're, there's a vitamin supplements the hand,

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Speaker 1: and then you start trying to figure out, wait, this

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Speaker 1: is speaking the language of science. It's not hitting those

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Speaker 1: crazy keywords that my cousin knows throwing out at this

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Speaker 1: imagined wedding. Uh, what am I to do? Mega vitea

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Speaker 1: fan burns fat fast? Should I trust this? I mean? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: So it has real implications in the real world that

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Speaker 1: it impacts your wallet, and it impacts the budgets of

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Speaker 1: countries that fund scientific research. You don't want the government

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Speaker 1: funding research in something that is complete bunk, right, So

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Speaker 1: getting to this question of demarcation, like how do you

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Speaker 1: tell the difference? What rule do you use? One? One

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Speaker 1: common dictionary definition of pseudoscience is something like quote a

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Speaker 1: collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based

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Speaker 1: on the scientific method. Well that's not very helpful, is it, right,

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Speaker 1: because that that just it's circular. It invokes the concept

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Speaker 1: of science to say what's not science? So it's not

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Speaker 1: helpful for solving the demarcation problem because it just says

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Speaker 1: pseudoscience is that which appears to be science but is

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Speaker 1: not those who are entering the tower of science and

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Speaker 1: not doing science there, or something to that effect, because yeah,

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Speaker 1: because the uh, the the scientific method is still present

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Speaker 1: at least it's invoked, right, so it becomes difficult to decipher. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So to really solve the problem, you'd want to come

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Speaker 1: up with some descriptive rule that exclusively describes science. It's

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Speaker 1: like a descriptive statement that describes everything that is science

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Speaker 1: and rules out everything that is not science. But it's

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Speaker 1: hard to come up with a rule like that, isn't it. Yeah?

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Speaker 1: I mean again, especially as you you become closer and

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Speaker 1: closer to the boundary line. You know it's um because

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Speaker 1: as we'll discuss here, it's it's kind of like imagine

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Speaker 1: the border between two states and you have you have

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Speaker 1: a couple, you have a couple of towns, right, and

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Speaker 1: one's just immediately on one side of the state line,

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Speaker 1: the others on the other. And if you're applying of

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Speaker 1: it's a very strict understanding of boundary lines here, then

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Speaker 1: this one is definitely in Arkansas, and this one's definitely

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Speaker 1: in Tennessee. But then if you start saying, well, actually

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Speaker 1: there's a little room uh to to go on either side,

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Speaker 1: then it just then you're confounded, All right, is this

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Speaker 1: one in Tennessee or is this one in Arkansas? How

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Speaker 1: about this one? Are they both in both states or

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Speaker 1: is it just how I feel when I visit that town. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: a lot of the solutions to the demarcation problem try

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Speaker 1: to draw some clear line. Okay, here we have an

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Speaker 1: exclusive rule that makes the distinction. So I know a

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Speaker 1: lot of scientists and some philosophers of science would probably

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Speaker 1: want to make a distinction based on empiricism as as

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Speaker 1: the first criteria. Right. So, empiricism is the idea that

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Speaker 1: it involves observations. You know, it's what you see or

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Speaker 1: what you can measure externally. That science can't be just

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Speaker 1: an internal logical exercise that has no contact with something

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Speaker 1: you see happening in the real world. Yeah, there has to.

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Speaker 1: It has it's evidence based. Right then. Of course you've

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Speaker 1: also got the you know, the scientific method that you

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Speaker 1: learned in elementary school. Some people would look at that

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Speaker 1: and say, okay, you know, that's basically how science works.

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Speaker 1: You ask a question, you make educated guests, that's your hypothesis.

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Speaker 1: You do some kind of empirical test on observable reality

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Speaker 1: to see if your guess is correct. Then you analyze

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Speaker 1: the results and draw conclusions. And you know, that's a

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Speaker 1: good simplified version for kids to learn yeah, I mean,

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Speaker 1: how do you walk into a dark room and find

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Speaker 1: out what what what the room contains and accurately judge

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Speaker 1: it without you know, hitting your head on something. But

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Speaker 1: there's a problem with that if we're trying to describe

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Speaker 1: science as it happens in the real world of professional discoveries,

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Speaker 1: because it doesn't. That method doesn't very closely describe the

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Speaker 1: process by which we came up with all kinds of

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Speaker 1: important and correct scientific theories in history. Like lots of

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Speaker 1: theories in physics, for example, we're just conceived simply as

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Speaker 1: abstract thought experiments, and they went for a long time

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Speaker 1: without empirical testing. Now we've empirically tested them and we know,

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Speaker 1: but they just started in Einstein's head. There are a

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Speaker 1: number of scientific concepts that were conceived, or certainly they

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Speaker 1: the people behind them attributed their conception to dreams, you know.

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Speaker 1: So it's hard to fit the dream world into any

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Speaker 1: serious contemplation of scientific method, right. Yeah. So there are

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Speaker 1: plenty of examples you can go through through history of

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Speaker 1: scientific theories that we didn't have empirical confirmation of for

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Speaker 1: a long time, even after people had accepted them as

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Speaker 1: probably true. You know, one good example that it comes

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Speaker 1: up in the debate we're gonna be talking about today

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Speaker 1: is the question of atoms. For a long time, scientists

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Speaker 1: knew that matter was based on atoms, but there was

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Speaker 1: no test they could do to confirm the existence of atoms.

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Speaker 1: Now there are, fortunately, but we didn't. We didn't have

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Speaker 1: those tests for a long time. Another problem with the

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Speaker 1: basic scientific method you learn an elementary school is that

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Speaker 1: if you just have some bad methodology, you can rule

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Speaker 1: in plenty of pseudoscience. Right, Like, if you just use

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Speaker 1: the scientific method, but you use it poorly, you can

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Speaker 1: prove the existence of psychics, ghosts, aliens, whatever you want. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean we see this time and time again. Right,

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Speaker 1: They'll be one guy who is able to create a

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Speaker 1: zero gravity state in a lab, and then any and

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Speaker 1: everyone else tries to replicate it and they don't get

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Speaker 1: the same results. And therefore either either what everybody's wrong,

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Speaker 1: and this one guy got it right once. No, it's

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Speaker 1: the reverse. Yeah, he used the method, he just did

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Speaker 1: a really bad job of using the method. Another way

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Speaker 1: that I think some people would address how to define

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Speaker 1: science and uh and solve the demarcation problem is I

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Speaker 1: think totally useless and they define science in a kind

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Speaker 1: of post talk back engineered pragmatic sense, as in, they

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Speaker 1: define sciences the method of inquiry which produces correct and

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Speaker 1: useful results. This is obviously not a helpful solution to

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Speaker 1: demarcation problem. Now if you're hearing all of this and thinking, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but then again, I mean, scientists are just doing their

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Speaker 1: scientific work. Do they really need to worry about all

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Speaker 1: of this, Uh, this philosophical back and forth, Like, is

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Speaker 1: this just a lot of talk that doesn't really amount

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Speaker 1: to anything? I would argue, no, it is not. I

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Speaker 1: think these philosophical concepts are crucial to doing good science. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and uh, especially when you when you start facing the

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Speaker 1: realization that you can't just do the science right. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There's a there's a wonderful quote from Daniel Dennett from

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Speaker 1: his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which we've discussed this in

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Speaker 1: a previous episode, but he says, quote, scientists sometimes deceive

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Speaker 1: themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only at best,

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Speaker 1: decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science,

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Speaker 1: and that they themselves are immune to the confusions. That

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Speaker 1: philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no

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Speaker 1: such thing as philosophy free science. There is only science

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Speaker 1: whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. I

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Speaker 1: entirely agree with that quote. I think that's right on

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Speaker 1: the money. I mean, if you hear a scientist say,

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Speaker 1: I don't bother with philosophy. I'm not interested in philosophical

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Speaker 1: content concepts. I just do the science. It's kind of

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Speaker 1: like if you had a person running for president who says, look,

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Speaker 1: I'm not political, I'm just gonna govern. Would you trust

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Speaker 1: that person? I mean, the reality is what they are

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Speaker 1: going to be governed by some kind of philosophy, whether

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Speaker 1: have you know, any kind of ideology guiding them is

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Speaker 1: just advertising the fact that they haven't thought very deeply

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Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, they because I like the idea of

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Speaker 1: a non political uh individual just judging without just ruling,

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Speaker 1: without any kind of uh, you know, weird hang ups

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Speaker 1: and constraints and agenda. But for that to really work,

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Speaker 1: you'd have to have like a superhuman you have to

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Speaker 1: have someone with like a self moving soul with someone

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Speaker 1: who could who could think and approach the task at

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Speaker 1: hand with just pure logic, unmoved by the endercurrents of opinion, bias, trauma,

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Speaker 1: or longing. Uh. You know, part of the the the

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Speaker 1: issue here is that science itself, with the scientific method

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Speaker 1: as its backbone, it's kind of a perfect engine, right

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Speaker 1: uh and and we're it's flawed operators. So perhaps you

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Speaker 1: know what we need here if would look at like

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Speaker 1: the Dune universe, we need like Mentat scientists, um or

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Speaker 1: we would need Dounyane scientists or bodhisatvas of scientific inquiry.

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Speaker 1: What do you mean, Duniane? What is that? Oh? They're

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Speaker 1: a there are people that are kind of like Mentats

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Speaker 1: and m are Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse saga. So they've

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Speaker 1: been able to just really through just generations and generations

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Speaker 1: of selective breeding and uh and and personal training, they've

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Speaker 1: managed to enter the two to breed a people that

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Speaker 1: are completely in the now, completely in control of their

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Speaker 1: of their soul and their mind states. So they're not

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Speaker 1: governed by uh, you know, past concerns, and when they

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Speaker 1: encounter people that are not douniating, they can just completely

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Speaker 1: manipulate them because they sort of stand outside of that path.

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Speaker 1: Humans engineered to no longer have preferences to only be

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Speaker 1: computers sort of. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And but that's

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Speaker 1: the other thing. Maybe what we need is an advanced hypercomputer,

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Speaker 1: some sort of you know, super AI that could do

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Speaker 1: all of the science that could that could be science

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Speaker 1: without the human concerns. Yeah, but we don't have that

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Speaker 1: right now. We just have the humans with some help

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Speaker 1: from the computers. Right. So today, the main topic that

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Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about is the idea of

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Speaker 1: empiricism and falsifiability in science. And we're gonna get to

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Speaker 1: what those what falsifiability means in a second, but also

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Speaker 1: about whether we have entered a phase in science where

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Speaker 1: there is room for a concept to known as post empiricism.

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Speaker 1: And if that sounds crazy to you, we will explain

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Speaker 1: what the arguments are just a bit. But we should

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Speaker 1: bring it back to the history of this demarcation problem.

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Speaker 1: How do you separate the science from the pseudoscience? And

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Speaker 1: one of the most common answers given by scientists today

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Speaker 1: would be traceable back to the twentieth century philosopher of

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Speaker 1: science Carl Popper So who was Carl Popper. Popper was

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Speaker 1: an Austrian British philosopher generally regarded as one of the

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Speaker 1: twentieth centuries greatest philosophers of science, and he identified demarcation

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Speaker 1: as the chief problem in the philosophy of science. Again,

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Speaker 1: how to judge science separated from from pseudoscience, separate the

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Speaker 1: sin from the virtue? Here to draw a really firm

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Speaker 1: line in the sand that we can stick by and

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Speaker 1: judge everything accordingly. And he thought he came up with

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Speaker 1: an answer to the problem, right, Yeah, yeah, he thought

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Speaker 1: he came up with with a pretty solid answer. And really,

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Speaker 1: I was reading about his life like he's stuck to

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Speaker 1: his guns, like towards the end of his life, you know,

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Speaker 1: he had he had he had plenty of critics who said, actually,

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Speaker 1: this doesn't work, blah blah blah. We'll get into the

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Speaker 1: specifics in a second. But he was devoted and he

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Speaker 1: would he spent his time either clarifying what he had

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Speaker 1: said or shooting down his critics. So, yeah, he's stuck

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Speaker 1: to his guns on this. But what was his answer?

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Speaker 1: How can you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?

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Speaker 1: What qualifies something as real science? Yeah? What is what?

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Speaker 1: Is the litmus test. Right. The answer he gave is falsifiability.

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Speaker 1: So what does that mean? So, according to Popper, in

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Speaker 1: order for a proposition right or wrong, to be scientific

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Speaker 1: in nature, it has to be falsifiable, meaning you have

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Speaker 1: to be able to describe empirical results, test results in

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Speaker 1: the real world that would show the proposition to be false.

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Speaker 1: And then in order to strengthen a theory, to build

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Speaker 1: confidence in it, you have to continually seek these exceptions

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Speaker 1: to your rule. You have to keep looking for ways

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Speaker 1: to break your theory, and you have to fail to

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Speaker 1: attain them over and over. Yeah, and this means there

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Speaker 1: has to be such thing as a critical test for

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Speaker 1: any given proposition proposition in order for it to be

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Speaker 1: scientific in nature. Right. And so let's give some examples

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Speaker 1: in science just throughout a theory what the rule is,

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Speaker 1: and then explain how how could you falsify it? So

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Speaker 1: here's one. Einstein's special theory of relativity says the speed

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Speaker 1: of light and a vacuum is the same for all observers. Now,

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Speaker 1: if you could get people in spaceships moving at different

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Speaker 1: speeds to measure the speed of light and a vacuum

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Speaker 1: and get different results than special relativity is wrong. It's falsified.

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Speaker 1: The theory is, in principle falsifiable. Another one would be

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Speaker 1: how about common descent uh. Common descent says that all

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Speaker 1: life on Earth is related and it evolved from a

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Speaker 1: single organism known as the last universal common ancestor or LUCA.

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Speaker 1: So if we looked at the genomes of plants and

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Speaker 1: animals and bacteria, all the different kingdoms of life, and

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Speaker 1: we found that they had all completely different genes and

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Speaker 1: use different genetic tools to accomplish the same basic survival

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Speaker 1: tasks like say, uh, metabolism, metabolizing sugars or something, this

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Speaker 1: would probably falsify common descent. It would make it look

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Speaker 1: like the kingdoms of life had multiple different origins. But

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Speaker 1: that's not what we find. So there there is support

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Speaker 1: for common descent. And here's one example that's often was

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Speaker 1: often touted by Paper himself. So astronomers of the nineteenth

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Speaker 1: century looked to the the the orbit of Uranus. Okay,

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Speaker 1: something seemed a bit off here, So two separate astronomers

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Speaker 1: they pointed out that the orbit of uran Is could

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Speaker 1: be explained via Newtonian physics as being caused by a

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Speaker 1: seventh and previously unknown planet, which of course turns out

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Speaker 1: to be Neptune. Astronomers subsequently discover Neptune, and it's exactly

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Speaker 1: where these two different astronomers predicted that it would be.

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Speaker 1: So Papa argued that in this Newton's theory was subjected

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Speaker 1: to a critical test and it passed. But critics would

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Speaker 1: have a different view of this. Critics such as uh

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Speaker 1: immor Octose point out that if they'd been in error,

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Speaker 1: if the if the two scientists here had been wrong,

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Speaker 1: if we hadn't found Neptune exactly where it is, we

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have thrown out Newtonian physics, right, We would have

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Speaker 1: looked for other possible culprits, any of the number of

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Speaker 1: reasons that those of that their their their theory here

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Speaker 1: could have been wrong. So it was hardly a test

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Speaker 1: of Newtonian physics at all. The falsification corroboration disjunction might

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Speaker 1: very well just be too simplistic. Yeah, and that's true

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Speaker 1: that there are plenty of criticisms of the poparian is

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Speaker 1: that the word poparian the falsification criteria in the philosophy

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Speaker 1: of science. But but this has been one of the

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Speaker 1: big ones that people have have latched onto over the

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Speaker 1: past century. Now to continue exploring falsification. On the contrary,

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Speaker 1: imagine what it's like to have a proposition where you

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Speaker 1: can't come up with any in principle empirical test that

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Speaker 1: would provide strong evidence against it. If you have something

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Speaker 1: like that, this is not a good thing. So imagine

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Speaker 1: a psychic medium claims to get information from the spirit world. Okay, well,

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Speaker 1: well let's come up with some tests for this. Let's say,

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Speaker 1: let's test the information that he's getting from the spirit

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Speaker 1: world and find out if it accurately reflects information about

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Speaker 1: dead people that he wouldn't have been able to know.

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Speaker 1: He can always say, well, actually, wait a minute, my

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Speaker 1: powers aren't going to work in the presence of the

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Speaker 1: negative energy created by skeptics. Uh so, well, well, maybe

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Speaker 1: we can put some believers in place and blind them

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Speaker 1: to the test and see if you're getting accurate information.

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Speaker 1: The psychic could still say, well, wait a minute, there

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Speaker 1: are also malicious spirits who are responsible for feeding me

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Speaker 1: incorrect information. Uh So, in the end, there is no

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Speaker 1: evidence that could really count against his powers. Anything that

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Speaker 1: could count against it is explained away. Yeah, you can

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Speaker 1: see this with a lot of supernatural ideas, Like one

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Speaker 1: of the big ones of core one that I often

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Speaker 1: think about is the hand of God. Uh. Analogy here, So,

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Speaker 1: if God exists outside of our universe, all right, if

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Speaker 1: he's outside of our universe, we can't really do anything

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Speaker 1: to disapprove or prove, right, because he's not a part

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Speaker 1: of the observable universe that we can test and we

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Speaker 1: can measure. Now, it's been argued that if the hand

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Speaker 1: of God then reaches into our universe to do things

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Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, create life, turn a city,

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Speaker 1: to solve whatever, then that hand has to interact with

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Speaker 1: our universe. It has to interact with atoms and molecules,

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Speaker 1: and therefore we would be able to measure a supernatural presence,

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Speaker 1: a presence from the outside reaching into our own by

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Speaker 1: the way it moved our molecules are atoms our world.

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Speaker 1: Oh okay, so that makes it sound like the presence

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Speaker 1: of supernatural interaction should be in theory testable. But when

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Speaker 1: you bring that up, people because because then you say

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Speaker 1: when we've never observed that, people will say, oh, well,

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Speaker 1: he doesn't have have to he or she does not

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Speaker 1: have to move the molecules. And then but then you're

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Speaker 1: just saying, oh, well, then they don't have to obey

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Speaker 1: any of the laws, and so it's super untestable. Right.

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Speaker 1: You're removing all possible conditions that could falsify what you're claiming. Right.

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Speaker 1: It kind of becomes like an argument between kindergarteners about

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Speaker 1: who just blasted who with a laser gun on the playground,

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Speaker 1: Like they can both deny that they've been vaporized by

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Speaker 1: a laser gun based on, uh, you know, increasingly preposterous

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Speaker 1: ideas about how the laser gun worked and what kind

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Speaker 1: of imaginary armor they were wearing. Right, But of course,

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Speaker 1: theories that are unfalsifiable in nature don't necessarily just appeal

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Speaker 1: to the paranormals, psychics and you know, ghosts and aliens

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Speaker 1: and stuff like that. You could also have secular, unfalsifiable theories.

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Speaker 1: How about this one, We are living inside a computer simulation.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love this one. Now, there might be

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Speaker 1: some ways that smart people could come up with to

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Speaker 1: test whether or not this is true. You could say, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, on a computer simulation, we'd expect to find X.

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Speaker 1: If we don't find X, that's evidence against it. Maybe,

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Speaker 1: But as far as I know, there's no test you

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Speaker 1: could perform to falsify the statement that we're living in

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Speaker 1: a computer simulation. There's no way to prove this isn't correct,

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Speaker 1: and thus it's just sort of like one of those things.

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Speaker 1: Well that's interesting to think about, but it seems unscientific

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Speaker 1: in nature, because if we're in a perfect simulation, we're

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Speaker 1: in a perfect simulation, and how would you possibly see

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Speaker 1: outside of it? It's um, it's kind of like this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: There's a fabulous description of human sight that was related

426
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 1: to me over the weekend, and that's the idea that

427
00:24:38,600 --> 00:24:41,800
Speaker 1: when you look at something with your through your vision um,

428
00:24:41,880 --> 00:24:46,320
Speaker 1: you're essentially regarding a timeline of the evolution of human vision.

429
00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:50,479
Speaker 1: So the corners of your eyes, you you're encountering just

430
00:24:50,640 --> 00:24:54,800
Speaker 1: blurry shapes, less color, less detail, and as you move

431
00:24:54,840 --> 00:24:57,280
Speaker 1: in towards the center of your eye, that's where you

432
00:24:57,280 --> 00:25:00,000
Speaker 1: can actually make out the details and and and very

433
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 1: precise movements and changes and and so it's a it's

434
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:07,119
Speaker 1: a timeline that converges at the center. But then that

435
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: makes it kind of difficult, if not impossible, to envision

436
00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:14,199
Speaker 1: things further along in the timeline because it's not a

437
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,840
Speaker 1: linear system. You know, huh, it's a it's it's closed

438
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:21,320
Speaker 1: to us. I guess if that makes sense. That's a

439
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:25,080
Speaker 1: very interesting statement. I've never heard that before. Yeah, yeah,

440
00:25:25,119 --> 00:25:28,160
Speaker 1: I keep keep thinking about it because it's I think

441
00:25:28,160 --> 00:25:30,520
Speaker 1: it's appliable to a lot of things, a lot of

442
00:25:31,080 --> 00:25:35,000
Speaker 1: topics concerning the limits of our of our observation, the

443
00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: limits of our of our experience, completely unrelated side note.

444
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: Did you know that if you have people hold up

445
00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:46,000
Speaker 1: colored flags at the very edge of your vision, you

446
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:48,560
Speaker 1: will not be able to tell what color they are? Oh? Yeah,

447
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:51,200
Speaker 1: well that makes sense because, to go with the timeline analogy,

448
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:53,080
Speaker 1: you are seeing out of your corner. How you're seeing

449
00:25:53,080 --> 00:25:55,359
Speaker 1: with a very primitive form of vision. But we have

450
00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,440
Speaker 1: the illusion that the corners of our eyes have color.

451
00:25:58,560 --> 00:26:01,120
Speaker 1: To that, oh yeah, when you look, Yeah, my peripheral

452
00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:03,040
Speaker 1: vision has just as much color as the center of

453
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:05,240
Speaker 1: my vision. You can test this and show it to

454
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:08,919
Speaker 1: be false. That statement is falsifiable and has been falsified,

455
00:26:08,960 --> 00:26:10,800
Speaker 1: because when you hold up these red flags at the

456
00:26:10,880 --> 00:26:13,479
Speaker 1: very edge of your vision, you can't tell the difference

457
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:16,800
Speaker 1: between red, blue orange. Try it out. Yeah, yeah, no

458
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:18,800
Speaker 1: matter what your memory says, because your mind is up

459
00:26:18,840 --> 00:26:22,200
Speaker 1: stitching it all together into some form that makes sense

460
00:26:22,240 --> 00:26:24,880
Speaker 1: at least, you know, at a glance. Okay, so we've

461
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 1: got this criterion here for for the demarcation problem. Real

462
00:26:28,440 --> 00:26:33,160
Speaker 1: science is falsifiable. It makes predictions, and it says, if

463
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:37,040
Speaker 1: this were true, my theory would be false. Ideas that

464
00:26:37,080 --> 00:26:40,080
Speaker 1: don't conform to this are in our experience, in our experience,

465
00:26:40,119 --> 00:26:43,879
Speaker 1: incredibly annoying to interrogate. And also I would say, in

466
00:26:43,880 --> 00:26:50,480
Speaker 1: our experience, do not generate accurate predictions, technologies or new knowledge. Yeah. Yeah,

467
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: because if it's just if it's an idea that you

468
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:54,320
Speaker 1: can't test, you can't prove, you can't do experiments on it,

469
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:56,120
Speaker 1: all you can do is just sort of is either

470
00:26:56,240 --> 00:27:00,320
Speaker 1: nod along or shake your head, you know, kind of

471
00:27:00,359 --> 00:27:04,280
Speaker 1: conduct any experiments and learn something more about the the

472
00:27:04,280 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 1: the inner workings of reality. Yeah. One last distinction I

473
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 1: want to make before we start to get to this

474
00:27:09,359 --> 00:27:13,680
Speaker 1: weird world of the idea of post empiricism. So there's

475
00:27:13,680 --> 00:27:16,800
Speaker 1: another type of empirical theory of science that's simply a

476
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 1: coral area I would say, a falsification, and that's verification.

477
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:23,040
Speaker 1: And this is actually the older theory. So it's they're

478
00:27:23,040 --> 00:27:26,320
Speaker 1: both empirical they're really two halves of the same coin, right,

479
00:27:26,840 --> 00:27:30,440
Speaker 1: But with verification, you make a positive prediction and then

480
00:27:30,480 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 1: you test to see if that's the case. So my

481
00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 1: prediction is that all cows on earth are brown. Um,

482
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:41,760
Speaker 1: so you go out and look, and let's say you

483
00:27:41,800 --> 00:27:45,480
Speaker 1: find some brown cows. Oh, what do you know? My

484
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:48,359
Speaker 1: theory is correct. So you can sort of see the

485
00:27:48,400 --> 00:27:50,600
Speaker 1: problem with this. You can keep testing and looking for

486
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 1: brown cows and finding brown cows, and if you were

487
00:27:54,520 --> 00:27:57,480
Speaker 1: to regard these the fact that you keep finding brown

488
00:27:57,560 --> 00:28:02,000
Speaker 1: cows as an evidence that your theory is correct. Instead,

489
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:05,280
Speaker 1: what you should be doing is looking for non brown cows,

490
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:08,320
Speaker 1: and you keep looking for them, and eventually, if you

491
00:28:08,400 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 1: find a non brown cow, then your theory has been falsified. Right.

492
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:14,639
Speaker 1: It's like finding a black swan. Yeah, and then it

493
00:28:14,720 --> 00:28:17,880
Speaker 1: changes what you know about swans as they actually exist. Now,

494
00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: of course, the fact that all the statement that all

495
00:28:20,680 --> 00:28:24,200
Speaker 1: cows are brown is wrong. That is wrong, even if

496
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:26,320
Speaker 1: it is formulated in such a way that it could

497
00:28:26,320 --> 00:28:30,920
Speaker 1: be falsified. An unfalsifiable version of the same idea would

498
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 1: be cows that appear brown to all observers and instruments

499
00:28:35,760 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: are nevertheless not really brown. That that is worse than

500
00:28:40,640 --> 00:28:45,040
Speaker 1: being wrong. It's not even wrong, it's unfalsifiable. But so

501
00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:47,680
Speaker 1: one takeaway from this, of course, is that you never

502
00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:51,760
Speaker 1: actually verify a theory under the criterion of falsifiability. There's

503
00:28:51,800 --> 00:28:55,040
Speaker 1: no such thing as one confidence that the theory is correct.

504
00:28:55,480 --> 00:28:58,520
Speaker 1: You just keep building up higher and higher levels of

505
00:28:58,560 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 1: confidence every time you try to find an exception, every

506
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:05,640
Speaker 1: time you try to falsify it, and you can't. Yeah,

507
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,680
Speaker 1: So that I mean, in that sense, the boundaries of

508
00:29:08,720 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: scientific understanding are constantly shifting, the constantly changing um at

509
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:18,600
Speaker 1: least you know, in the realms beyond like extremely verified fact. Right,

510
00:29:18,920 --> 00:29:21,320
Speaker 1: But his red wine good for you? Is coffee good

511
00:29:21,360 --> 00:29:24,400
Speaker 1: for you? This is a line that is that is

512
00:29:24,440 --> 00:29:27,120
Speaker 1: continually changing. Right, And that's a problem because that that

513
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:30,000
Speaker 1: question is not well defined. What do you mean good

514
00:29:30,040 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: for me on average? How do you compare the different

515
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:37,760
Speaker 1: goods versus bads? Goods and bad What are studied by science?

516
00:29:38,280 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take a quick break, but when

517
00:29:40,080 --> 00:29:50,560
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to get into post empiricism. Okay,

518
00:29:50,560 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 1: So we've established that some scientists and philosophers of science

519
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 1: have latched onto this idea of falsifiability or at least

520
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:03,520
Speaker 1: some version of impure coal confirmation, as as the criterion

521
00:30:03,560 --> 00:30:07,240
Speaker 1: you use to tell science from pseudoscience. But are there

522
00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:11,080
Speaker 1: any scientific problems that would lead a non quack that

523
00:30:11,120 --> 00:30:14,720
Speaker 1: would lead a respectable scientist who does real work with

524
00:30:14,720 --> 00:30:20,880
Speaker 1: with real data, to propose a non falsifiable hypothesis. Actually,

525
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,760
Speaker 1: there are some cases where we have very smart, very

526
00:30:23,800 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 1: respectable scientists who are doing work on hypotheses that are

527
00:30:28,880 --> 00:30:33,480
Speaker 1: widely agreed to be non falsifiable, at least today. And

528
00:30:33,640 --> 00:30:38,120
Speaker 1: so how about fundamental physics. What's at the bottom of

529
00:30:38,160 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: our physical theory of the universe? Well, depends on who

530
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:46,200
Speaker 1: you ask, But if you ask a certain portion of

531
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:50,520
Speaker 1: the scientific community and the philosophic community, they will say

532
00:30:50,600 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 1: string is at the bottom of everything. Yes, And we're

533
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:55,400
Speaker 1: of course talking about string theory. Now, I know what

534
00:30:55,440 --> 00:30:58,040
Speaker 1: you're thinking out that are you thinking, Hey, Robert and Joe,

535
00:30:58,040 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: I didn't sign up for string theory this episode? While

536
00:31:01,160 --> 00:31:03,720
Speaker 1: you're getting some string theory. But well, we're gonna blow

537
00:31:03,760 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 1: through just a very quick definition of what it is,

538
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:08,640
Speaker 1: a reminder of what it is so that we can proceed.

539
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:11,920
Speaker 1: And uh, we're we're gonna be fairly limited in this.

540
00:31:12,080 --> 00:31:14,360
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not gonna go too

541
00:31:14,360 --> 00:31:18,200
Speaker 1: deep on this. Uh. I mean, you can really leave

542
00:31:18,240 --> 00:31:21,120
Speaker 1: it at just imagining a cartoon character and a sweater

543
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 1: and what happens when someone pulls on the threat at

544
00:31:23,880 --> 00:31:26,720
Speaker 1: the bottom of everything unravels. That is true, that is

545
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:30,840
Speaker 1: the full scientific definition. But but to go a little deeper. Um, okay,

546
00:31:30,840 --> 00:31:34,000
Speaker 1: So you have particle physicists to define elementary particles or

547
00:31:34,000 --> 00:31:36,959
Speaker 1: fundamental particles as the smallest building blocks in the universe.

548
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: In other words, particles such as leptons and quarks have

549
00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 1: no substructure. There As small as it gets, you can't

550
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:45,600
Speaker 1: split them up. Now, that's not the case for string

551
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: theorists to think we need to venture deeper or smaller

552
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:51,960
Speaker 1: than our current technology allows. So they propose that each

553
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:56,640
Speaker 1: so called fundamental particle fundamental particle actually contains a tiny, vibrating,

554
00:31:56,680 --> 00:31:59,960
Speaker 1: one dimensional loop of string. The vibration of the string

555
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:04,040
Speaker 1: determines the charge and mass of the greater particle. So

556
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:08,040
Speaker 1: superstring theories take this idea and build the entire universe

557
00:32:08,040 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 1: from the bottom up. Uh. And it's it's a challenging task,

558
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:15,120
Speaker 1: and that's why we speak of string theories in the plural,

559
00:32:15,480 --> 00:32:18,120
Speaker 1: because there are several different string theories that attempt to

560
00:32:18,120 --> 00:32:22,080
Speaker 1: make it all work. At least ten dimensions are called

561
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:26,080
Speaker 1: for um. A lot of maths physicists proposed that any

562
00:32:26,120 --> 00:32:29,320
Speaker 1: dimensions beyond time and visible space are folded up out

563
00:32:29,320 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 1: of sight into these you know, very complex, uh extra

564
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:36,719
Speaker 1: dimensional shapes that you often see are rendered with computer

565
00:32:36,800 --> 00:32:41,360
Speaker 1: graphics on string theory articles, tiny extra dimensions that that

566
00:32:41,360 --> 00:32:43,600
Speaker 1: that we can't even measure. They're they're just too small

567
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,719
Speaker 1: for us to perceive, crawling with shadow creatures that come

568
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:51,080
Speaker 1: out to grab children. Um, so and and is and

569
00:32:51,200 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: is that that what indicates a superstring theory is still developing,

570
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:57,680
Speaker 1: meaning that physicists continue to work out the kinks in

571
00:32:57,720 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: the individual string theories, but they're eventually What they're aiming

572
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:05,600
Speaker 1: to do is is fulfill Einstein's unrealized goal of unifying

573
00:33:05,720 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: general relativity with quantum theory. And that's why string theory

574
00:33:09,520 --> 00:33:12,680
Speaker 1: is also sometimes called a theory of everything because it

575
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:16,720
Speaker 1: would serve someday as a foundation for all future scientists,

576
00:33:17,200 --> 00:33:21,200
Speaker 1: scientific discovery, and innovation. The idea that it is an

577
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 1: incomplete section in this grand bridge. Yeah, so another way

578
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:28,719
Speaker 1: string theories often characterized is that that it's a unification

579
00:33:28,800 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 1: as it attempts to bring together macrophysics, things like relativity,

580
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: you know that happen on huge energies and and and scales,

581
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 1: with microphysics, the stuff in the quantum world, you know,

582
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:44,200
Speaker 1: very very small. Right now, we have strong theories of

583
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:48,440
Speaker 1: microphysics that explain very well what we see at those scales,

584
00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 1: and we have strong theories of relativity that explain very

585
00:33:51,160 --> 00:33:53,959
Speaker 1: well what we see, you know, with gravity at huge scales.

586
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: But they just don't mesh together very well. And so

587
00:33:57,480 --> 00:34:00,920
Speaker 1: string theory would attempt to explain all those things with

588
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:05,400
Speaker 1: one underlying theory that that implies both of them. And

589
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:09,200
Speaker 1: in reality, the theory is just a set of mathematical models,

590
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:12,880
Speaker 1: right It's mathematical models showing the behavior of these strings

591
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:16,560
Speaker 1: and how they could produce the effects of the universe

592
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: we see at these different scales. But there's a problem,

593
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:25,400
Speaker 1: right String physics phenomena are too tiny to observe even

594
00:34:25,480 --> 00:34:29,880
Speaker 1: with our most powerful experimental instruments. They can't be found

595
00:34:29,880 --> 00:34:32,799
Speaker 1: by our particle colliders or anything else we're likely to

596
00:34:32,840 --> 00:34:36,440
Speaker 1: build in the near future. So we can make a

597
00:34:36,520 --> 00:34:41,040
Speaker 1: mathematical string theory model that very beautifully explains everything we

598
00:34:41,120 --> 00:34:45,080
Speaker 1: already know, but we can't use it to predict any

599
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 1: new physical results that we'd be able to detect and

600
00:34:48,040 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 1: use to confirm or falsify it. So that's sort of

601
00:34:52,560 --> 00:34:56,319
Speaker 1: a problem. Right, Is this still science? Wait a minute, now,

602
00:34:56,400 --> 00:35:01,120
Speaker 1: If we're just coming up with mathematical instruments that explain

603
00:35:01,239 --> 00:35:05,239
Speaker 1: what we already know but don't make predictions that we

604
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:11,600
Speaker 1: can experimentally test, what is it science? And is it useful? Yeah?

605
00:35:11,600 --> 00:35:13,360
Speaker 1: It's it sounds like it's like putting the car in

606
00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:16,839
Speaker 1: if not park, then at least neutral, you know, it's

607
00:35:16,880 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: it's going to stop moving after a while. Right right? Uh,

608
00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:23,840
Speaker 1: here's another one. How about cosmology? Oh yeah, what's the

609
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,480
Speaker 1: ultimate nature of the universe. It's a big question with

610
00:35:27,560 --> 00:35:31,680
Speaker 1: big answers, big answers that we often cannot test, um

611
00:35:32,040 --> 00:35:35,200
Speaker 1: generally cannot test and going you on one side just

612
00:35:35,239 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 1: say the existence of God or God's but also you

613
00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:41,600
Speaker 1: get into multiverse theory, the idea that our universe is

614
00:35:41,680 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: just one of many and essentially the library of Babbel

615
00:35:45,200 --> 00:35:49,279
Speaker 1: right right, yeah, so it's that movie Multiplicity. Wait, what

616
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:51,280
Speaker 1: was that movie? Is that the one one more jetly

617
00:35:51,680 --> 00:35:53,640
Speaker 1: kills all the other jet leads to game power. No,

618
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:56,359
Speaker 1: I think that's the one that's a really good one. Though,

619
00:35:57,000 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: now I'm thinking, what's the one that has lots of

620
00:36:01,600 --> 00:36:04,239
Speaker 1: Michael Keaton? Yeah, that the clone Michael Keaton's I think

621
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:08,520
Speaker 1: it's multiplicity, Okay, yeah, no, no, no no, I was confusing

622
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:11,640
Speaker 1: it mentally with virtuosity. The one oh that has with

623
00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:15,600
Speaker 1: the Russell Crowe is like a synthetic human clone. Yeah,

624
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:20,080
Speaker 1: and Denzel Washington, Yeah, yeah, each other. I just remember

625
00:36:20,080 --> 00:36:24,760
Speaker 1: he had like there's a blue blood or something like that. Well, anyway,

626
00:36:25,280 --> 00:36:28,560
Speaker 1: like string theory, there's this idea of the multiverse that's

627
00:36:28,560 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 1: pretty much untestable. It's but it could be a very

628
00:36:32,920 --> 00:36:36,000
Speaker 1: elegant outworking of the data we already have. So we

629
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:39,920
Speaker 1: have a bunch of observations. We say, if there were

630
00:36:40,040 --> 00:36:43,800
Speaker 1: many many universes, it would explain some of the things

631
00:36:43,840 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 1: we see. But we can't make a prediction based on

632
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:50,880
Speaker 1: the belief in the many many universes that we can test.

633
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:53,360
Speaker 1: At least, there's not a clear one. In fact, I

634
00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:56,960
Speaker 1: think I have read some physicists suggesting that multiverse could

635
00:36:57,000 --> 00:37:00,160
Speaker 1: maybe be potentially tested in theory based on something out

636
00:37:00,160 --> 00:37:03,640
Speaker 1: spacetime geometry. But I think that's an ongoing debate that

637
00:37:03,719 --> 00:37:06,440
Speaker 1: I don't fully understand. Yeah, a lot of this kind

638
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:10,960
Speaker 1: of it boils down to the prospect of building a

639
00:37:10,960 --> 00:37:14,040
Speaker 1: bridge into the darkness, and how far into the darkness

640
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:18,160
Speaker 1: are you willing to build that bridge accepting that the

641
00:37:18,640 --> 00:37:23,240
Speaker 1: necessary substructure will be there? Right? Okay, Well, in this case,

642
00:37:23,360 --> 00:37:26,879
Speaker 1: if we are talking about science and you know, real

643
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 1: science and maybe multiverse cosmology or string theory being except

644
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:35,480
Speaker 1: some people would have a problem with that statement exactly. No,

645
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:39,960
Speaker 1: no, no no, I'm saying, if we consider these things science, uh,

646
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:44,000
Speaker 1: it seems like we need to sort of revise what

647
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:48,480
Speaker 1: are demarcation problem solution is right, assuming we were starting

648
00:37:48,480 --> 00:37:50,799
Speaker 1: with false fiability, which a lot of modern philosophers of

649
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:54,960
Speaker 1: science probably wouldn't um. And so here's where we get

650
00:37:55,000 --> 00:37:59,040
Speaker 1: into the idea of post empiricism, the idea of so

651
00:37:59,200 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: just meaning after empiricism, after only being based on observations

652
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:07,920
Speaker 1: and physical tests. And I want to talk about a

653
00:38:07,960 --> 00:38:14,240
Speaker 1: theoretical physicist turned philosopher named Richard Davitt who has studied

654
00:38:14,280 --> 00:38:17,240
Speaker 1: and written in favor of the concept of post empiricism.

655
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:19,759
Speaker 1: On behalf of string theory, and he he had this

656
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:23,080
Speaker 1: interview with three AM magazine that was published in July.

657
00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:27,120
Speaker 1: He but he also wrote a book called String Theory

658
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 1: and the Scientific Method, and he tries to make a

659
00:38:29,719 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 1: case for a new sort of philosophy of evaluating the

660
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:38,359
Speaker 1: scientific merits of theories that isn't just based on empirical testing. Uh,

661
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 1: that sounds kind of crazy, right, But let's see what

662
00:38:41,000 --> 00:38:44,240
Speaker 1: he has to say. So, you've got string theory. You've

663
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 1: got this problem that you can paint a self consistent

664
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:52,080
Speaker 1: picture of the mathematical properties of strings. And if they existed,

665
00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:54,719
Speaker 1: they'd answer a lot of questions, right, they would help

666
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:58,279
Speaker 1: unify our view of physics. But there's currently no way

667
00:38:58,320 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: we know of to directly text strings or their effects.

668
00:39:02,600 --> 00:39:06,160
Speaker 1: So in what sense his string theory different from saying

669
00:39:06,560 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: invisible acid gremlins push all the particles in the universe

670
00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,880
Speaker 1: around to produce the effects we interpret as microphysics and

671
00:39:13,920 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 1: general relativity. Is it any better? And and Davitt would

672
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:21,720
Speaker 1: argue that these are not equally valid claims, that string

673
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:25,200
Speaker 1: theory is actually much better as a scientific claim, even

674
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:29,720
Speaker 1: if it's not empirically testable. And the thing is that

675
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:33,080
Speaker 1: that feels like a true statement, right, Yeah, but not

676
00:39:33,239 --> 00:39:37,799
Speaker 1: everyone would agree. So instead, Davitt thinks that even in

677
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:41,520
Speaker 1: cases where you can't falsify a theory empirically, you can

678
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:45,560
Speaker 1: establish confidence in the theory with the use of philosophical

679
00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:50,960
Speaker 1: and probabilistic arguments. Sort of about the research program that

680
00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:54,719
Speaker 1: produced the theory. It's sort of a meta science. It's

681
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:59,399
Speaker 1: judging the quality of science by the scientific situation that

682
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:03,200
Speaker 1: create at it. Okay, so let's try to give some

683
00:40:03,239 --> 00:40:05,880
Speaker 1: examples of the arguments he would give on behalf of

684
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:09,799
Speaker 1: something like string theory. One argument is the lack of

685
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:13,640
Speaker 1: alternative theories. Okay, so it kind of goes back to

686
00:40:13,840 --> 00:40:17,279
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes logic. Yeah, it's it's the only game in town.

687
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:21,400
Speaker 1: Davitt says, string theory is the only theory that integrates

688
00:40:21,400 --> 00:40:25,000
Speaker 1: into one overall theory our topical understanding of high energy

689
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:28,560
Speaker 1: physics based on gauge field theory, and our understanding of

690
00:40:28,600 --> 00:40:32,959
Speaker 1: cosmology based on general relativity. So he's saying that there

691
00:40:33,000 --> 00:40:36,600
Speaker 1: just aren't any other theories that explain all this stuff.

692
00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: It's the only one we've come up with that seems

693
00:40:39,200 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: viable and do. It also argues that in the past,

694
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:46,239
Speaker 1: when we had no alternative to a consistent theory, that

695
00:40:46,360 --> 00:40:50,160
Speaker 1: theory was often later shown to be correct. So there's

696
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:53,160
Speaker 1: sort of a precedent for saying, well, when scientists are

697
00:40:53,160 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 1: working on a question and they come up with a

698
00:40:55,920 --> 00:41:00,879
Speaker 1: theory that answers the question, even if it's not empirically

699
00:41:00,880 --> 00:41:04,520
Speaker 1: testable at the time, we later learned that they were

700
00:41:04,640 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: right if it was the only theory they could come

701
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:09,920
Speaker 1: up with. Right, Yeah, and that makes sense, right, you

702
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 1: to proceed to actually push forward, sometimes you have to

703
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:19,480
Speaker 1: envision what the reality may be. You have to create

704
00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:22,359
Speaker 1: this model and then see how it plays out over

705
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 1: time exactly. So he also says, look, it has proven

706
00:41:26,680 --> 00:41:30,640
Speaker 1: conceptually useful. That's a second argument. So Dobvitt suggests that

707
00:41:30,719 --> 00:41:36,560
Speaker 1: string theorists have given physicists insights into other problems in

708
00:41:36,600 --> 00:41:39,839
Speaker 1: physics that they weren't originally setting out to solve when

709
00:41:39,840 --> 00:41:43,319
Speaker 1: the theory was conceived, So it explains more than it

710
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 1: was originally meant to explain. That seems like another good

711
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:49,920
Speaker 1: tick in the evidence column. In other words, it's not

712
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:53,480
Speaker 1: predicting a physical outcome that we tested, but it's sort

713
00:41:53,520 --> 00:41:58,280
Speaker 1: of yielding some mathematical results. That that that fit together

714
00:41:58,360 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 1: in interesting ways. And then the last major argument he

715
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:04,759
Speaker 1: gives is sort of that the way I would put

716
00:42:04,800 --> 00:42:08,759
Speaker 1: it is that it grows from proper scientific soil. You know,

717
00:42:08,960 --> 00:42:13,880
Speaker 1: it's not like saying saying acid gremlins. That it comes

718
00:42:13,960 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 1: out of a research project of high energy physics. And

719
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:21,560
Speaker 1: this research project of high energy physics has generated all

720
00:42:21,640 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: kinds of other ideas that have been testable empirically and

721
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:28,319
Speaker 1: have been accurate. All right, well, all three of these

722
00:42:28,320 --> 00:42:32,279
Speaker 1: are making sense. He seems logical, sure, And he gives

723
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:34,360
Speaker 1: another example from the past. I think it's when we

724
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:36,799
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, but he says, you know, if if you

725
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:40,160
Speaker 1: look at the past, what about atomists, people who thought

726
00:42:40,200 --> 00:42:42,600
Speaker 1: that the matter in the world was made of atoms?

727
00:42:43,040 --> 00:42:45,680
Speaker 1: According to Devitt, scientists thought that the world was made

728
00:42:45,680 --> 00:42:49,200
Speaker 1: of atoms long before they had any way of experimentally

729
00:42:49,360 --> 00:42:53,239
Speaker 1: confirming predictions of atomic theory. Of course, we have those

730
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:57,960
Speaker 1: experiments now, but atomic theory was the only serious theory

731
00:42:57,960 --> 00:43:00,520
Speaker 1: of matter on the table, so there were no altern natives.

732
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:04,640
Speaker 1: It yielded insights that it didn't set out to yield, Like,

733
00:43:04,719 --> 00:43:08,480
Speaker 1: it explained more than it was designed to explain. That's

734
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:11,560
Speaker 1: his second case with string theory, and he says it

735
00:43:11,600 --> 00:43:14,920
Speaker 1: emerged from a research program that had success in making

736
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:18,719
Speaker 1: other predictions that were empirically verified, you know, not from

737
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:24,160
Speaker 1: It didn't come from demonology. It came from chemistry and physics.

738
00:43:24,160 --> 00:43:26,080
Speaker 1: So that's interesting to me. Now we're going to get

739
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,960
Speaker 1: into some serious criticisms of this way of thinking, but

740
00:43:29,320 --> 00:43:32,759
Speaker 1: this does kind of broaden the picture and suggest that

741
00:43:34,000 --> 00:43:37,200
Speaker 1: maybe our way of thinking about what's a good scientific

742
00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:41,160
Speaker 1: idea should be more complicated than just saying like, well,

743
00:43:41,160 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: it's something where you can do a physical test with

744
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,279
Speaker 1: an observable result, and you can say what would falsify it?

745
00:43:47,360 --> 00:43:50,960
Speaker 1: And you show that that's not the case. Yeah, it,

746
00:43:51,719 --> 00:43:54,280
Speaker 1: you know, And I can't help but think of examples

747
00:43:54,360 --> 00:43:59,680
Speaker 1: such as geocentricism, uh, heliocentricism, you know, in terms of

748
00:43:59,680 --> 00:44:03,840
Speaker 1: all of you know, certainly false theories that we eventually realized,

749
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:05,920
Speaker 1: oh well, the Earth isn't the center of the universe,

750
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:07,920
Speaker 1: the Sun is at the center of the universe, and

751
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:11,040
Speaker 1: yet all those theories were still they were still useful

752
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 1: models thinking about the structure of the Solar system before

753
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:20,880
Speaker 1: we really had a more nuanced understanding of what it was.

754
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:24,160
Speaker 1: But with with something like string theory, it's such a

755
00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:28,759
Speaker 1: complex and robust uh creation. You know that it was

756
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:31,200
Speaker 1: such a robust theory that it seems like there's there's

757
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:34,480
Speaker 1: much more on the line, and there's much more room

758
00:44:34,680 --> 00:44:37,919
Speaker 1: to potentially create something that is not so Yeah, well,

759
00:44:37,960 --> 00:44:41,920
Speaker 1: and with string theory also, should we treat string theory

760
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:46,080
Speaker 1: differently than other theories because it's supposedly a final theory,

761
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:49,480
Speaker 1: you know, if it's the ultimate theory of matter in

762
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 1: the universe, should there be different rules for assessing it

763
00:44:53,120 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 1: than there would be for assessing you know, some theory

764
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:58,880
Speaker 1: of gene selection or some other you know, some theory

765
00:44:58,960 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 1: in in biology, g or regular chemistry or something. Because

766
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: it doesn't set itself up to evolve. And of course hindsight,

767
00:45:06,239 --> 00:45:09,120
Speaker 1: but you look back at heliocentricism and you can see

768
00:45:09,120 --> 00:45:12,240
Speaker 1: its place in an evolution of thought. But but certainly

769
00:45:12,280 --> 00:45:14,440
Speaker 1: when people are arguing strength theory, they're not saying, well,

770
00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:16,320
Speaker 1: this is strength theory and hopefully we'll work up to

771
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:20,560
Speaker 1: wool theory and nylon theory, you know, or whatever. Right,

772
00:45:21,400 --> 00:45:24,520
Speaker 1: like you said, it's it's it's it's argued as a

773
00:45:24,840 --> 00:45:26,640
Speaker 1: as a as a as a fix to the end

774
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:29,560
Speaker 1: of the line. But yeah, that's that's a very good

775
00:45:29,560 --> 00:45:35,000
Speaker 1: point you make about heliocentrism, because it's like, um, it

776
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:38,399
Speaker 1: was less wrong. That was the important thing, was that

777
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:41,840
Speaker 1: it was less wrong than geocentrism, even though it was

778
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:45,000
Speaker 1: still wrong, and it still allowed you to have a

779
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:55,280
Speaker 1: pretty accurate understanding of the of immediate solar mechanics. Yeah,

780
00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:58,800
Speaker 1: so to me, there does seem to be something interesting

781
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:02,960
Speaker 1: going on in what Davitt is saying, Like it's not um,

782
00:46:03,200 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: it's not just a bunch of junk. Then again, there

783
00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:08,919
Speaker 1: might be limits to how far you can extend these

784
00:46:08,960 --> 00:46:12,120
Speaker 1: ideas he's propounding in in how you're going to define science.

785
00:46:12,320 --> 00:46:14,239
Speaker 1: It almost makes it seem like it would have to

786
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: be a case by case scenario. You'd have to take

787
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:20,440
Speaker 1: him on a case by case basis, and that that

788
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:23,480
Speaker 1: means there's no absolute rule. It thinks there's just some

789
00:46:23,520 --> 00:46:26,399
Speaker 1: guidelines and then we have to weigh in on it. Yeah,

790
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:28,960
Speaker 1: so I want to read some some criticisms. One of

791
00:46:29,000 --> 00:46:34,160
Speaker 1: them is the theoretical physicist Sabine Hassenfelder. She responded to

792
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:37,319
Speaker 1: this interview that I mentioned, and first of all, she

793
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:42,400
Speaker 1: says flatly, post empirical science is an oxymoron, just flat

794
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:45,000
Speaker 1: out that there is no such thing. Now, David actually

795
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: defends himself by saying that he doesn't advocate quote post

796
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:54,400
Speaker 1: empirical science, just post empirical theory assessment, which is honest,

797
00:46:54,600 --> 00:46:56,920
Speaker 1: I have to admit as a distinction which I have

798
00:46:57,040 --> 00:47:02,480
Speaker 1: failed to grasp the significance of. But well, it's maybe

799
00:47:02,480 --> 00:47:07,839
Speaker 1: there's something there. But anyway, Hassenfelder, her response to this,

800
00:47:07,920 --> 00:47:09,759
Speaker 1: had a really good quote that I wanted to read

801
00:47:09,800 --> 00:47:13,360
Speaker 1: that I thought sums up the attitude of the critics

802
00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:17,480
Speaker 1: of post empiricism pretty well. She said, quote this non

803
00:47:17,520 --> 00:47:22,160
Speaker 1: empirical theory assessment, while important, can however only be means

804
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 1: to the end of an eventual empirical assessment without making

805
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: contact to observation. A theory isn't useful to describe the

806
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:35,239
Speaker 1: natural world, not part of the natural sciences, and not physics.

807
00:47:35,760 --> 00:47:39,719
Speaker 1: These insights that Davitt speaks of are thus not assessments

808
00:47:39,760 --> 00:47:42,680
Speaker 1: that can ever validate an idea as being good to

809
00:47:42,880 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: describe nature, and a theory based on non empirical assessment

810
00:47:47,920 --> 00:47:52,799
Speaker 1: does not belong in the natural sciences. So I think

811
00:47:52,840 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 1: she's acknowledging that maybe there is something to non empirical

812
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 1: theory assessment ownly in the sense that it might help

813
00:48:01,800 --> 00:48:04,759
Speaker 1: bridge us along until we can get to a time

814
00:48:04,840 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 1: when there is empirical confirmation. Maybe if we can eventually

815
00:48:08,640 --> 00:48:12,920
Speaker 1: come up with ways of testing the predictions of string theory.

816
00:48:12,960 --> 00:48:15,480
Speaker 1: But and but if we don't ever get there, then

817
00:48:15,600 --> 00:48:19,680
Speaker 1: this assessment is type of assessment is useless. Right, And then,

818
00:48:19,719 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: of course, how do you get to the point where

819
00:48:21,160 --> 00:48:23,480
Speaker 1: you can test it if you're not working towards that point,

820
00:48:24,040 --> 00:48:26,560
Speaker 1: you know, you don't just say, oh, accidentally, we're now

821
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:28,640
Speaker 1: in a position to test out this theory that we

822
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:32,920
Speaker 1: refused to give credence earlier. Now, another voice on this

823
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:36,759
Speaker 1: matter that we came across is a cow Tech physicist,

824
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:40,560
Speaker 1: Sean Carroll, who wrote on edge dot org answering the

825
00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:47,400
Speaker 1: question what scientific idea is ready for retirement? His answer falsifiability. Um,

826
00:48:47,440 --> 00:48:51,759
Speaker 1: you know, he he sticks by empiricism, but once a

827
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:58,480
Speaker 1: different empirical paradigm, not post empiricism, but post falsifiability. Simply put,

828
00:48:58,480 --> 00:49:01,840
Speaker 1: and this is a quote from from his paper, refusing

829
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:05,560
Speaker 1: to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some

830
00:49:05,800 --> 00:49:09,040
Speaker 1: a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial

831
00:49:09,120 --> 00:49:12,440
Speaker 1: role in how the world works is as non scientific

832
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:15,799
Speaker 1: as it gets. Yeah, and I think Carol makes a

833
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:19,640
Speaker 1: good point. They're like, so there may in fact be

834
00:49:19,719 --> 00:49:23,120
Speaker 1: strings at the bottom of reality, you know, matter, the

835
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:27,160
Speaker 1: universe may be based on strings and and membranes. Uh.

836
00:49:27,200 --> 00:49:30,200
Speaker 1: And there may in fact be a multiverse. There may

837
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:33,960
Speaker 1: be other universes out there and stuff like that. It

838
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:37,080
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense for us to say, well, we can't

839
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:42,120
Speaker 1: entertain that possibility because it doesn't fit with our model

840
00:49:42,320 --> 00:49:46,080
Speaker 1: of the solution to the demarcation problem. You know, He's

841
00:49:46,080 --> 00:49:48,440
Speaker 1: saying we should have we should be coming up with

842
00:49:48,520 --> 00:49:52,319
Speaker 1: ways to assess these things, even if it doesn't classically

843
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:57,239
Speaker 1: fit the philosophy of science, definition of science. And of

844
00:49:57,280 --> 00:50:00,640
Speaker 1: course Carol, he posits a couple of different criteria, so

845
00:50:00,719 --> 00:50:03,319
Speaker 1: he he still wants to stick with empiricism, but he

846
00:50:03,840 --> 00:50:06,960
Speaker 1: proposes I think that that it must be what definite

847
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:11,480
Speaker 1: and empirical rather than falsifiable, so that it has to

848
00:50:11,560 --> 00:50:14,400
Speaker 1: be a theory that is scientific in nature, has to

849
00:50:14,400 --> 00:50:18,640
Speaker 1: be well defined, it's described in a clear, unambiguous way,

850
00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:23,359
Speaker 1: and it also has to interact with empirical data in

851
00:50:23,440 --> 00:50:26,200
Speaker 1: some way, like it has to take into account what

852
00:50:26,280 --> 00:50:29,120
Speaker 1: we know empirically about the universe, which, of course, like

853
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:32,600
Speaker 1: string theory and the multiverse do, they explain what we

854
00:50:32,719 --> 00:50:36,400
Speaker 1: already know. The problem is they don't make predictions about

855
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:39,439
Speaker 1: what we could know in the future that can be tested, Right,

856
00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:41,759
Speaker 1: So you couldn't you couldn't use it as a way

857
00:50:41,800 --> 00:50:45,000
Speaker 1: to prop up your own hollow earth theories. Yeah, alright,

858
00:50:45,040 --> 00:50:50,400
Speaker 1: So what else do we have here in terms of criticism, agreement, etcetera.

859
00:50:50,440 --> 00:50:53,560
Speaker 1: In the stream wars Well, I've came across a Nature

860
00:50:53,680 --> 00:50:57,880
Speaker 1: comment piece from December by the mathematician George Ellis and

861
00:50:57,920 --> 00:51:02,560
Speaker 1: the physicist Joe Silk called scientific method defend the integrity

862
00:51:02,560 --> 00:51:07,359
Speaker 1: of physics, and they were taking a stand against post empiricism,

863
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:11,480
Speaker 1: or against at least some uses of it. Uh so

864
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:13,719
Speaker 1: that they start off by saying that, you know, some

865
00:51:13,760 --> 00:51:16,839
Speaker 1: scientists now argue that if a theory is quote sufficiently

866
00:51:16,960 --> 00:51:21,480
Speaker 1: elegant and explanatory, it doesn't have to be tested experimentally.

867
00:51:21,800 --> 00:51:25,680
Speaker 1: And some examples they give our string theory, the kaleidoscopic multiverse,

868
00:51:26,080 --> 00:51:29,680
Speaker 1: the many worlds interpretation of quantum reality. That's one, you know,

869
00:51:29,719 --> 00:51:32,320
Speaker 1: So you've got the the equations of quantum physics. We

870
00:51:32,560 --> 00:51:35,480
Speaker 1: those are very well tested. We know they're accurate, But

871
00:51:35,680 --> 00:51:38,239
Speaker 1: what do they mean when you have the you know,

872
00:51:38,280 --> 00:51:41,240
Speaker 1: the supposed collapse of the way of function or whatever,

873
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:45,319
Speaker 1: What do they mean really happens in reality when a

874
00:51:45,400 --> 00:51:50,400
Speaker 1: probabilistic wave function event happens. Well, one way of interpreting

875
00:51:50,440 --> 00:51:53,560
Speaker 1: it is saying, Okay, every time there's a quantum event

876
00:51:53,640 --> 00:51:56,880
Speaker 1: that could go one way or another, reality actually splits

877
00:51:57,040 --> 00:52:00,479
Speaker 1: into different realities and you have different worlds or both

878
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:03,160
Speaker 1: are true, and now we're in the multiverse, right, Yeah,

879
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:06,759
Speaker 1: different type of multiverse, the many worlds quantum reality multiverse.

880
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:10,480
Speaker 1: Another one would be pre Big Bang concepts. They say,

881
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:13,520
Speaker 1: you know, trying to do math about what happened before

882
00:52:13,640 --> 00:52:16,120
Speaker 1: the Big Bang? If that makes any sense? Yeah, like

883
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:20,120
Speaker 1: what happened before the initial singularity of all existence? Like

884
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:23,840
Speaker 1: was it in a giant's pocket to some marvels on

885
00:52:23,920 --> 00:52:27,040
Speaker 1: the back of a turtle? Yeah, exactly that. Uh. And

886
00:52:27,080 --> 00:52:30,480
Speaker 1: so they say, if you if you d couple science

887
00:52:30,719 --> 00:52:36,399
Speaker 1: from experimental false falsification quote, theoretical physics risks becoming a

888
00:52:36,480 --> 00:52:41,120
Speaker 1: no man's land between mathematics, physics, and philosophy that does

889
00:52:41,200 --> 00:52:45,680
Speaker 1: not truly meet the requirements of any i love that quote.

890
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:48,640
Speaker 1: That's a great quote from from the article. Yeah, does

891
00:52:48,680 --> 00:52:52,879
Speaker 1: it become this own purely? You know, does it become

892
00:52:52,960 --> 00:52:55,880
Speaker 1: just an abstraction? Right? Has it left the realm of

893
00:52:55,880 --> 00:53:00,000
Speaker 1: the natural sciences without yet just becoming a philosophical discuss

894
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:05,520
Speaker 1: shan or or abstract mathematics in in truth. So they

895
00:53:05,520 --> 00:53:08,680
Speaker 1: make a couple of specific examples about string theory where

896
00:53:08,719 --> 00:53:12,759
Speaker 1: they disagree with with Davitt's arguments um, But then they

897
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:14,960
Speaker 1: also go on to say, you know, look, history is

898
00:53:15,000 --> 00:53:19,200
Speaker 1: full of examples of elegant and compelling theories ideas that

899
00:53:19,320 --> 00:53:24,440
Speaker 1: lead scientists in the wrong direction. They cite Ptolemy's geocentric universe,

900
00:53:24,760 --> 00:53:30,200
Speaker 1: Lord Kelvin's vortex theory of the atom, Hoyle's steady state universe,

901
00:53:30,280 --> 00:53:34,480
Speaker 1: you know, the the eternal unchanging universe. And in the

902
00:53:34,560 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 1: end they say, quote, in our view, the issue boils

903
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 1: down to clarifying one question, what potential observational or experimental

904
00:53:42,200 --> 00:53:45,120
Speaker 1: evidence is there that would persuade you that the theory

905
00:53:45,280 --> 00:53:48,239
Speaker 1: is wrong and lead you to abandon it. If there

906
00:53:48,360 --> 00:53:51,759
Speaker 1: is none, it is not a scientific theory. So here

907
00:53:51,760 --> 00:53:55,239
Speaker 1: they're staking out basically with falsification. They're saying it's got

908
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:59,600
Speaker 1: to be falsifiable in in a testable physical way, or

909
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: it is not science. This is not meeting the definition.

910
00:54:03,360 --> 00:54:06,640
Speaker 1: And they also mentioned some practical considerations that that are

911
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:09,319
Speaker 1: worth considering. One of them is that they say, you know,

912
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:13,400
Speaker 1: even if there's some merit to post empirical theory assessment

913
00:54:14,120 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 1: in niche subject areas where we can't perform experiments like

914
00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:21,799
Speaker 1: string theory and stuff, public discussion of this could have

915
00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:27,920
Speaker 1: disastrous consequences. It could cause confusion and undermine public confidence

916
00:54:27,960 --> 00:54:31,520
Speaker 1: in h in science generally, and especially in politically charged

917
00:54:31,560 --> 00:54:36,759
Speaker 1: scientific ideas like climate change, evolution, vaccines, GMO safety, all

918
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:40,320
Speaker 1: of which are empirically based. But if you start introducing

919
00:54:40,680 --> 00:54:43,680
Speaker 1: this idea but what waits some science isn't based on

920
00:54:43,719 --> 00:54:48,000
Speaker 1: empirical testing, you're going to hurt people's confidence in the science.

921
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:51,240
Speaker 1: That is. Yeah, it ceases to become this this pure

922
00:54:51,239 --> 00:54:54,960
Speaker 1: engine of learning and knowledge and truth and becomes this

923
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:58,279
Speaker 1: more abstract thing. Great, people you're always asking what he

924
00:54:58,400 --> 00:55:00,800
Speaker 1: was driving it? Yeah, people are asking the wait a minute,

925
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:04,560
Speaker 1: so what is just people doing weird intellectual experiments in

926
00:55:04,600 --> 00:55:07,680
Speaker 1: their ivory towers that can't be confirmed or denied by

927
00:55:07,680 --> 00:55:11,080
Speaker 1: by experiments. Um And then so they go on to

928
00:55:11,080 --> 00:55:14,040
Speaker 1: say also that claiming the theory is too good for

929
00:55:14,160 --> 00:55:18,279
Speaker 1: testing opens the door to two genuine pseudoscientists who would

930
00:55:18,280 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 1: claim the same thing about their ideas. My my psychic

931
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:24,960
Speaker 1: powers are are just too elegant and too well explanatory,

932
00:55:25,080 --> 00:55:28,040
Speaker 1: you know, they explain the facts too perfectly to be

933
00:55:28,160 --> 00:55:32,160
Speaker 1: suggested subjected to this you know, prediction problem. Yeah, this

934
00:55:32,239 --> 00:55:33,799
Speaker 1: is kind of the scenario. You get into the hand

935
00:55:33,840 --> 00:55:38,719
Speaker 1: of god argument or conversation that one might have with

936
00:55:38,719 --> 00:55:43,000
Speaker 1: with someone where you can you throw out the criticisms

937
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:44,799
Speaker 1: just you point out to where it wouldn't work. But

938
00:55:44,800 --> 00:55:47,680
Speaker 1: then they can always they can always change the argument

939
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:50,920
Speaker 1: until it's it's there's no way to possibly refute it right,

940
00:55:51,040 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 1: And so they end by saying the imperimeter of science

941
00:55:53,920 --> 00:55:56,680
Speaker 1: should be awarded only to a theory that is testable.

942
00:55:56,719 --> 00:56:00,440
Speaker 1: Only then can we defend science from attack. And to me,

943
00:56:01,480 --> 00:56:03,960
Speaker 1: these seem like concerns that are a very important part

944
00:56:04,000 --> 00:56:07,440
Speaker 1: of the conversation about science communication. It's almost more about

945
00:56:07,440 --> 00:56:10,640
Speaker 1: what you and I do, Robert, But they don't seem

946
00:56:10,719 --> 00:56:14,200
Speaker 1: especially relevant to me, at least to the internal conversation

947
00:56:14,280 --> 00:56:17,920
Speaker 1: between scientists about what kind of work in physics is

948
00:56:17,920 --> 00:56:20,960
Speaker 1: worth doing, and how much confidence we should have in

949
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:24,080
Speaker 1: ideas like string theory. I don't know what you think

950
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:26,640
Speaker 1: about that, but it seems to me like that that's

951
00:56:26,719 --> 00:56:30,839
Speaker 1: kind of irrelevant. That's more just a public policy conversation. Yeah,

952
00:56:30,920 --> 00:56:32,799
Speaker 1: I would, I would agree, though, I mean, when it

953
00:56:32,800 --> 00:56:35,040
Speaker 1: comes to reading about physics, I have to admit I

954
00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:38,880
Speaker 1: would probably choose to read about theoretical physics before I

955
00:56:38,920 --> 00:56:46,080
Speaker 1: would read anymore about experimental experimental things. Yeah. Um, And

956
00:56:46,080 --> 00:56:48,160
Speaker 1: of course we should point out that not all theoretical

957
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:51,680
Speaker 1: physics is is removed from experiment. I mean, I think,

958
00:56:51,840 --> 00:56:54,520
Speaker 1: I think most theoretical physics, you know, they're interacting with

959
00:56:54,560 --> 00:56:57,920
Speaker 1: particle colliders and and and all the experiments that we're

960
00:56:57,920 --> 00:57:01,640
Speaker 1: out there doing gathering data on. But yeah, I don't know,

961
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:04,080
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're supposed to do in these

962
00:57:04,120 --> 00:57:08,880
Speaker 1: cases where where it's not just that string theorists decided

963
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:12,480
Speaker 1: that they didn't want to test their their theories. You

964
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:16,280
Speaker 1: know that they are by necessity dealing with a part

965
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:19,800
Speaker 1: of reality that we can't access experimentally. That that's just

966
00:57:19,880 --> 00:57:22,960
Speaker 1: how it is. They didn't design it that way, you

967
00:57:22,960 --> 00:57:26,200
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like, they didn't pick it. It's

968
00:57:26,280 --> 00:57:30,760
Speaker 1: just a problem with our powers. And another thing I

969
00:57:30,760 --> 00:57:33,600
Speaker 1: think I would acknowledge is that it seems like almost

970
00:57:33,640 --> 00:57:36,360
Speaker 1: all of these people who are critics of the the

971
00:57:36,440 --> 00:57:39,800
Speaker 1: idea of post empirical theory assessment, you know, using these

972
00:57:40,040 --> 00:57:46,400
Speaker 1: criteria other than physical testing, acknowledge that there's something to it.

973
00:57:46,680 --> 00:57:49,800
Speaker 1: They seem to say, okay, yeah, they would probably admit

974
00:57:50,240 --> 00:57:53,240
Speaker 1: that string theory has more going for it than the

975
00:57:53,320 --> 00:57:57,720
Speaker 1: acid Grimlin's hypothesis. There So there is something to the

976
00:57:57,800 --> 00:58:02,320
Speaker 1: non empirical uh theory assessment. They just don't seem to

977
00:58:02,360 --> 00:58:06,080
Speaker 1: say that it's enough to call it science. Yeah, you know,

978
00:58:06,120 --> 00:58:07,920
Speaker 1: I can't help me. Be reminded in all this of

979
00:58:08,400 --> 00:58:13,560
Speaker 1: nineteenth century German philosopher Frederick of Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's Natural

980
00:58:13,600 --> 00:58:18,040
Speaker 1: Philosophy Um Philosophy of Nature in German um. And this

981
00:58:18,080 --> 00:58:21,280
Speaker 1: is a concept um he developed as a sort of

982
00:58:21,520 --> 00:58:25,080
Speaker 1: augmentation to science that would allow science to investigate the

983
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:28,920
Speaker 1: human spirit, because he saw nature or the force nature

984
00:58:29,640 --> 00:58:33,080
Speaker 1: and the human spirit or the forced geist as the

985
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:35,959
Speaker 1: two great opposing forces in cosmos, with the human mind

986
00:58:36,000 --> 00:58:40,200
Speaker 1: at the center of everything. So nature, according to two Shilling,

987
00:58:40,680 --> 00:58:44,600
Speaker 1: is the visible spirit of the invisible spirit of the mind.

988
00:58:45,280 --> 00:58:47,200
Speaker 1: But again, the mind is very much at the center

989
00:58:47,320 --> 00:58:52,480
Speaker 1: of the equation um. Now he was this This concept

990
00:58:52,520 --> 00:58:55,880
Speaker 1: was attacked for, among other things, lack of empirical orientation,

991
00:58:56,480 --> 00:58:58,560
Speaker 1: and indeed a lot of it seems to hinge on

992
00:58:58,600 --> 00:59:03,560
Speaker 1: the investigation of invisible the comprehension of the scientific getting

993
00:59:03,680 --> 00:59:07,360
Speaker 1: unverifiable through the lens of something at least linked to

994
00:59:07,400 --> 00:59:11,720
Speaker 1: the substance of science. So it's it's hard to I

995
00:59:11,800 --> 00:59:13,240
Speaker 1: think I thought of that a lot when I was

996
00:59:13,320 --> 00:59:15,040
Speaker 1: reading over some of the material, because it seems like

997
00:59:15,040 --> 00:59:22,400
Speaker 1: a good example of sort of bad post empirical science. Yeah,

998
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:25,560
Speaker 1: the idea that you're gonna you're gonna, you're gonna take,

999
00:59:25,600 --> 00:59:27,120
Speaker 1: you're gonna go as far as science will take, and

1000
00:59:27,160 --> 00:59:32,439
Speaker 1: then you're just gonna completely extrapolate it into the unseen um.

1001
00:59:32,480 --> 00:59:35,160
Speaker 1: But then the counter argument is, then, how is that different?

1002
00:59:35,200 --> 00:59:38,080
Speaker 1: How is that ultimately different from something like string theory. Yeah,

1003
00:59:38,080 --> 00:59:41,640
Speaker 1: I mean we're back to the demarcation problem, right, Yeah, like,

1004
00:59:41,960 --> 00:59:44,200
Speaker 1: what is the rule we're using to tell the difference?

1005
00:59:44,240 --> 00:59:47,000
Speaker 1: I sense a difference to a sense that there's something

1006
00:59:47,160 --> 00:59:51,600
Speaker 1: much more respectable about string theory and multiverse cosmology than

1007
00:59:51,640 --> 00:59:56,439
Speaker 1: there is about the the invisible spirit um, but it's

1008
00:59:56,560 --> 00:59:59,440
Speaker 1: hard to articulate exactly what that is though, though I

1009
00:59:59,440 --> 01:00:03,000
Speaker 1: would say that Davits criteria are somewhat useful in that regard.

1010
01:00:03,480 --> 01:00:05,920
Speaker 1: They give you some criteria for saying, Okay, we're not

1011
01:00:06,000 --> 01:00:09,920
Speaker 1: running a test, but here are some characteristics of these

1012
01:00:09,960 --> 01:00:15,280
Speaker 1: theories that do seem to make them probabilistically and historically

1013
01:00:15,480 --> 01:00:19,920
Speaker 1: more likely to be correct than just gremlins or invisible spirits.

1014
01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:23,240
Speaker 1: You know, it reminds me of something else, and that

1015
01:00:23,400 --> 01:00:26,600
Speaker 1: is the the Ian and Banks Culture books, which I

1016
01:00:26,600 --> 01:00:28,760
Speaker 1: know would bring up a lot but but but he

1017
01:00:28,800 --> 01:00:30,960
Speaker 1: managed to fit a lot of science into these, at

1018
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:34,640
Speaker 1: least in the earlier books. It's established that in this uh,

1019
01:00:34,800 --> 01:00:37,880
Speaker 1: in this culture known as the culture, you have all

1020
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:41,120
Speaker 1: these AI minds that are really ruling everything, that rule

1021
01:00:41,160 --> 01:00:44,280
Speaker 1: these giant warships, and they make all the decisions, and

1022
01:00:44,360 --> 01:00:48,000
Speaker 1: they they do all the heavy thinking and heavy lifting

1023
01:00:48,120 --> 01:00:50,720
Speaker 1: for the humans and humanoids that make up the culture.

1024
01:00:51,080 --> 01:00:53,640
Speaker 1: But they keep the human humans around and they occasionally

1025
01:00:53,640 --> 01:00:56,520
Speaker 1: have the humans, you know, engaging and very important roles.

1026
01:00:56,800 --> 01:01:01,480
Speaker 1: And part of this UH, it's it's it's a proposed

1027
01:01:01,600 --> 01:01:06,680
Speaker 1: is because the humans will occasionally make leaps in judgment

1028
01:01:06,840 --> 01:01:11,640
Speaker 1: or in theory that the machines do not cannot, Which

1029
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:13,720
Speaker 1: comes back to that that idea that I put forth

1030
01:01:13,720 --> 01:01:17,520
Speaker 1: earlier about how if you had a pure computer, a pure,

1031
01:01:17,520 --> 01:01:21,840
Speaker 1: pure logical entity doing the science, Um, would there be

1032
01:01:21,920 --> 01:01:24,840
Speaker 1: limitations to that? Would would there be this place where

1033
01:01:24,880 --> 01:01:28,400
Speaker 1: you would need a non empirical jump in logic that

1034
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:33,040
Speaker 1: only a human who is a bound and shackled to

1035
01:01:33,200 --> 01:01:36,120
Speaker 1: their prior beliefs and their philosophies, that only they could

1036
01:01:36,160 --> 01:01:39,160
Speaker 1: make what a what a skeptical engine? You know, a

1037
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:44,360
Speaker 1: computer of scientific investigation not be able to make intuitive speculations.

1038
01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:49,600
Speaker 1: You would have to have the the the Devil's advocate computer, right, Yeah,

1039
01:01:50,280 --> 01:01:54,880
Speaker 1: throw weird ideas out there and then allow for testing.

1040
01:01:56,960 --> 01:02:01,640
Speaker 1: Oh this this veil of testing. And uh so, one

1041
01:02:01,680 --> 01:02:03,600
Speaker 1: more thing I wanted to mention before the end of this.

1042
01:02:03,640 --> 01:02:06,400
Speaker 1: I was actually inspired to do this episode by reading

1043
01:02:06,400 --> 01:02:09,440
Speaker 1: a really good article on this whole subject of you know,

1044
01:02:09,520 --> 01:02:14,400
Speaker 1: post empiricism and falsifiability in science by the philosopher of

1045
01:02:14,440 --> 01:02:18,720
Speaker 1: science Massimo Peliucci that he wrote in Eon magazine, which

1046
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:21,400
Speaker 1: is always one of our favorites. Around her and their

1047
01:02:21,400 --> 01:02:23,600
Speaker 1: nonprofit now so if you really like what they're doing

1048
01:02:24,520 --> 01:02:27,560
Speaker 1: over there, you can donate to the cause, by the way. Yeah,

1049
01:02:27,600 --> 01:02:31,320
Speaker 1: but uh so Peleucci mates makes a point in his

1050
01:02:31,760 --> 01:02:36,080
Speaker 1: approach to this topic. He wonders if what if science

1051
01:02:36,840 --> 01:02:40,600
Speaker 1: is not it can't be demarcated in a way that

1052
01:02:40,800 --> 01:02:44,880
Speaker 1: a word like triangle can. So there's a word triangle

1053
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:47,919
Speaker 1: that has a very clear definition, has what he would

1054
01:02:47,920 --> 01:02:52,120
Speaker 1: call quote necessary and jointly sufficient properties, and that just

1055
01:02:52,200 --> 01:02:56,080
Speaker 1: means it has a description which includes everything that could

1056
01:02:56,120 --> 01:02:58,880
Speaker 1: possibly be a triangle and rules out everything that is

1057
01:02:58,920 --> 01:03:01,920
Speaker 1: not a triangle. It has three angles that add up

1058
01:03:01,920 --> 01:03:07,360
Speaker 1: to degrees um perfect description of all triangles and nothing else.

1059
01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: What if science is simply not like that? There aren't

1060
01:03:11,400 --> 01:03:15,200
Speaker 1: statements that are a perfect description of science and nothing else.

1061
01:03:16,160 --> 01:03:20,240
Speaker 1: And rather science is more a concept that is based

1062
01:03:20,360 --> 01:03:25,440
Speaker 1: on what Wittgenstein would call family resemblances, in that it's

1063
01:03:25,480 --> 01:03:28,960
Speaker 1: a term like game. Now, could you come up with

1064
01:03:29,000 --> 01:03:32,080
Speaker 1: a definition or a description of what games are that

1065
01:03:32,160 --> 01:03:36,840
Speaker 1: includes everything that's a game and excludes everything that's not

1066
01:03:36,920 --> 01:03:39,600
Speaker 1: a game? Yeah, this is actually something that comes up

1067
01:03:39,600 --> 01:03:43,000
Speaker 1: a lot when I play games, such as my argument

1068
01:03:43,000 --> 01:03:47,000
Speaker 1: that apples what apples to apples apples to apples. Yeah,

1069
01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 1: not a game. Um as fun as the other one is?

1070
01:03:51,080 --> 01:03:54,080
Speaker 1: What is it with all the awful cards in it?

1071
01:03:54,200 --> 01:03:57,240
Speaker 1: Cards against Humanity? Also very fun? But not a game

1072
01:03:57,320 --> 01:03:59,520
Speaker 1: according to you. According to me, some people would say

1073
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:02,040
Speaker 1: it's a game. Is chopping would a game? You know?

1074
01:04:02,080 --> 01:04:04,360
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I really love chopping wood.

1075
01:04:04,440 --> 01:04:06,520
Speaker 1: Some people think that as a chore, but I don't know.

1076
01:04:06,600 --> 01:04:09,600
Speaker 1: I guess it was just fun to swing an axe. Uh, well,

1077
01:04:09,760 --> 01:04:12,280
Speaker 1: certainly that's the thing. You can turn non games into

1078
01:04:12,320 --> 01:04:16,360
Speaker 1: games by establishing a set of rules for your completion

1079
01:04:16,400 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 1: of that task. Yeah. Yeah, you can turn things that

1080
01:04:19,160 --> 01:04:21,560
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a game at all into a game. But

1081
01:04:21,640 --> 01:04:24,280
Speaker 1: you could get a room full of people to have

1082
01:04:24,320 --> 01:04:27,480
Speaker 1: a list of activities like chopping wood, apples to apples,

1083
01:04:28,280 --> 01:04:30,760
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things like that, and say is

1084
01:04:30,800 --> 01:04:32,800
Speaker 1: this a game or is it not? And mostly I

1085
01:04:32,840 --> 01:04:36,440
Speaker 1: think they'd agree. You know, you'd get general agreement on

1086
01:04:36,520 --> 01:04:38,360
Speaker 1: the on the use of this term as it applies

1087
01:04:38,400 --> 01:04:40,560
Speaker 1: to things. And yet we can't come up with this

1088
01:04:40,720 --> 01:04:45,040
Speaker 1: necessary and jointly sufficient description of what games are. Maybe

1089
01:04:45,080 --> 01:04:47,760
Speaker 1: science is like that. So in a sense, science is

1090
01:04:47,760 --> 01:04:49,880
Speaker 1: a thing that would not be able to see itself,

1091
01:04:49,920 --> 01:04:52,960
Speaker 1: it would not be able to get itself because it

1092
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:58,560
Speaker 1: itself does not fall into the uh specificity of form

1093
01:04:58,680 --> 01:05:02,800
Speaker 1: that science requires. That could be I don't know. Um,

1094
01:05:03,080 --> 01:05:06,080
Speaker 1: I find this topic very interesting because I don't quite

1095
01:05:06,080 --> 01:05:08,000
Speaker 1: know what the answer is. I'm not sure how I

1096
01:05:08,000 --> 01:05:10,600
Speaker 1: feel about it. Obviously, I'm not a physicist, so I'm

1097
01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:14,560
Speaker 1: not I'm not working in these fields like multiverse cosmology

1098
01:05:14,600 --> 01:05:17,560
Speaker 1: and string theory, so I'm not even educated enough in

1099
01:05:17,600 --> 01:05:20,520
Speaker 1: them to really judge the intrinsic merits of the ideas,

1100
01:05:20,560 --> 01:05:25,880
Speaker 1: but just accepting that they are very good theoretical solutions. Yeah. Well,

1101
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:27,640
Speaker 1: I think this is the that this is the appropriate

1102
01:05:27,680 --> 01:05:31,680
Speaker 1: feeling to have about it, because we're talking about theories

1103
01:05:31,840 --> 01:05:34,880
Speaker 1: that take us to the edge of human understanding and

1104
01:05:34,960 --> 01:05:38,840
Speaker 1: extrapolate beyond right and that's that is a place who

1105
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:40,960
Speaker 1: I think where we can all agree it's okay to

1106
01:05:41,080 --> 01:05:45,640
Speaker 1: feel inadequate, It's okay to feel befuddled and unsure, because

1107
01:05:45,720 --> 01:05:49,920
Speaker 1: that is the nature of the age. Yeah yeah, um

1108
01:05:49,960 --> 01:05:51,760
Speaker 1: so yeah, I guess in the end, like I, I

1109
01:05:51,800 --> 01:05:54,400
Speaker 1: sort of see what Dovid is saying, like his his

1110
01:05:54,600 --> 01:05:56,840
Speaker 1: distinctions do make sense to me. I also see what

1111
01:05:56,880 --> 01:06:00,360
Speaker 1: the critics are saying about that not quite being science,

1112
01:06:00,440 --> 01:06:02,680
Speaker 1: or at least not science in the same way that

1113
01:06:02,760 --> 01:06:06,720
Speaker 1: all the science we really care about is. Uh. I

1114
01:06:06,760 --> 01:06:09,400
Speaker 1: wonder how that should work out in terms of practical

1115
01:06:09,440 --> 01:06:14,960
Speaker 1: concerns like funding, Like should we be funding using public

1116
01:06:15,000 --> 01:06:18,480
Speaker 1: money to fund string theory research in the same way

1117
01:06:18,800 --> 01:06:23,800
Speaker 1: that we're funding stuff that is being tested and falsified. Yeah,

1118
01:06:23,840 --> 01:06:25,720
Speaker 1: I mean it seems to me you often encounter problems

1119
01:06:25,760 --> 01:06:30,320
Speaker 1: when you start opening up the discussion to the merits

1120
01:06:30,360 --> 01:06:33,560
Speaker 1: of this particular scientific inquiry versus all the others. You know,

1121
01:06:33,600 --> 01:06:35,080
Speaker 1: you kind of get into that hole, why are you

1122
01:06:35,120 --> 01:06:38,320
Speaker 1: doing this when we haven't cured cancer? And then your

1123
01:06:38,320 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 1: answer is like, wow, this is this is theoretical physicist

1124
01:06:41,080 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 1: physics here. We weren't going to actually achieve a cure

1125
01:06:45,400 --> 01:06:48,920
Speaker 1: for cancer, as that's not our area of expertise. Yeah,

1126
01:06:49,160 --> 01:06:51,720
Speaker 1: Like the the sort of false assumption of a zero

1127
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:54,919
Speaker 1: sum game in the investigation of science. This is something

1128
01:06:54,920 --> 01:06:56,919
Speaker 1: that comes up a lot, you know, as somebody does

1129
01:06:56,960 --> 01:07:00,200
Speaker 1: a study that has an interesting but not necessarily early

1130
01:07:00,280 --> 01:07:04,720
Speaker 1: technological result, and people comment under the article, why are

1131
01:07:04,760 --> 01:07:07,040
Speaker 1: they studying this when they could be curing cancer? Right?

1132
01:07:07,080 --> 01:07:09,919
Speaker 1: As though, what the shrimp on a treadmill scenario, where

1133
01:07:09,920 --> 01:07:11,720
Speaker 1: it's just become Oh, I can't believe it. Our tax

1134
01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:13,920
Speaker 1: dollars are paying for shrimps on a treadmill. And then

1135
01:07:13,960 --> 01:07:16,080
Speaker 1: you ignore the fact that well, it's it's it's still

1136
01:07:16,080 --> 01:07:19,000
Speaker 1: advancing science. If it's a you know, it's a valid study,

1137
01:07:19,400 --> 01:07:21,800
Speaker 1: it's just maybe not as as sexy or as a

1138
01:07:22,520 --> 01:07:27,360
Speaker 1: uh you knows, as obvious an advancement, and you don't

1139
01:07:27,400 --> 01:07:30,720
Speaker 1: even know in the future in what ways it may

1140
01:07:30,760 --> 01:07:34,440
Speaker 1: inform future technologies and other applications. I mean, that's always

1141
01:07:34,640 --> 01:07:36,640
Speaker 1: the thing with science. We we don't always know what

1142
01:07:36,760 --> 01:07:38,960
Speaker 1: the outcomes are going to be of learning something. Yeah,

1143
01:07:39,000 --> 01:07:42,000
Speaker 1: as this thing called science continues to creep out, sometimes

1144
01:07:42,000 --> 01:07:45,000
Speaker 1: it is snail's pace, uh, sometimes a bit faster into

1145
01:07:45,000 --> 01:07:48,840
Speaker 1: the unknown. Alright, So how about you, how do you

1146
01:07:48,880 --> 01:07:51,480
Speaker 1: feel about this particular topic, And do you think the

1147
01:07:51,640 --> 01:07:54,640
Speaker 1: so called string wars that we're talking about here, do these,

1148
01:07:54,720 --> 01:07:58,320
Speaker 1: as some critics charge, distract from the real battle that

1149
01:07:58,360 --> 01:08:01,040
Speaker 1: should be going on against pseudos science and the misuse

1150
01:08:01,080 --> 01:08:03,920
Speaker 1: of science by various outlets. Is this kind of the

1151
01:08:04,840 --> 01:08:07,560
Speaker 1: you know, the wars of the of the Seven Kingdoms

1152
01:08:07,600 --> 01:08:11,200
Speaker 1: that are occurring while the white Walkers of pseudoscience march

1153
01:08:11,320 --> 01:08:13,920
Speaker 1: down from the north. That that is true. Also, I mean,

1154
01:08:13,960 --> 01:08:16,960
Speaker 1: are are we sitting here arguing about what physicists should

1155
01:08:17,040 --> 01:08:21,360
Speaker 1: or shouldn't be contemplating? Meanwhile, we've got alternative medicine peddlers

1156
01:08:21,400 --> 01:08:24,920
Speaker 1: who are at the gates. Yeah, who knows. Uh. We'd

1157
01:08:24,960 --> 01:08:27,320
Speaker 1: love to hear from all you guys and gals about that.

1158
01:08:27,720 --> 01:08:29,280
Speaker 1: And if you we want to get in touch with us,

1159
01:08:29,320 --> 01:08:30,800
Speaker 1: you want to learn more about what we do, there

1160
01:08:30,800 --> 01:08:32,800
Speaker 1: are several ways to do so. First of all, Stuff

1161
01:08:32,840 --> 01:08:35,280
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot Com is the mothership. It's

1162
01:08:35,280 --> 01:08:37,679
Speaker 1: where we have all of our podcast videos, blog posts,

1163
01:08:37,680 --> 01:08:39,880
Speaker 1: et cetera, as well as links out to our various

1164
01:08:39,880 --> 01:08:43,160
Speaker 1: social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook and Instagram.

1165
01:08:43,640 --> 01:08:45,880
Speaker 1: We're active on all of those and Stuff to Blow

1166
01:08:45,880 --> 01:08:49,600
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com itself has just recently experienced a redesign,

1167
01:08:50,080 --> 01:08:52,920
Speaker 1: so everything's coming together there. It's looking really sharp. If

1168
01:08:52,960 --> 01:08:54,559
Speaker 1: you haven't checked it out, or if you checked out

1169
01:08:54,560 --> 01:08:57,559
Speaker 1: in the past, make sure you visited again. And if

1170
01:08:57,560 --> 01:08:59,360
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us with feedback

1171
01:08:59,400 --> 01:09:01,280
Speaker 1: on this episod, soda or any other or you want

1172
01:09:01,280 --> 01:09:03,200
Speaker 1: to let us know something you think we should cover

1173
01:09:03,240 --> 01:09:05,400
Speaker 1: in the future. You can always email us and blow

1174
01:09:05,439 --> 01:09:17,080
Speaker 1: the mind at how stuff work. Stuff comes for more

1175
01:09:17,160 --> 01:09:19,439
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how

1176
01:09:19,479 --> 01:09:43,280
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com