Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how stop
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe
Speaker 1: McCormick and Robert I want to put you in a scenario.
Speaker 1: All right, let's do it. Okay, So just recently I
Speaker 1: was at a family gathering, a wedding and old family event.
Speaker 1: And when you go to a you know, family reunion
Speaker 1: type event, you meet a lot of people you haven't
Speaker 1: seen in a long time. You get to catch up
Speaker 1: on what they're doing. So imagine you are at a
Speaker 1: family reunion type event and you're talking to a distant
Speaker 1: cousin of yours who's going to night school to get
Speaker 1: her graduate degree. And you're like, oh, cool, yeah, I
Speaker 1: do I do a science show. What what are you
Speaker 1: studying at your your school? And she can give you
Speaker 1: a couple of answers. Let's contemplate the first one. The
Speaker 1: first answer is, oh, I study radio astronomy. So we
Speaker 1: look at distant objects in the sky by measuring the
Speaker 1: radio frequency energy they admit. And you're like, cool, so
Speaker 1: how does that work? And she says, well, so we
Speaker 1: aim radio telescope arrays at far away stars and galaxies,
Speaker 1: and we collect the data and feeded into computers, and
Speaker 1: that allows us to draw conclusions about the physical properties
Speaker 1: of those objects. Sounds legit. Okay, here's another answer she
Speaker 1: could give. She says, Oh, yeah, I study psychic astro sociology,
Speaker 1: So we study distant civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy
Speaker 1: by tuning into the psychic energies that they beam to
Speaker 1: our planet through their Numa transmitters. The number of red
Speaker 1: flags already, yeah, So you don't even really have to
Speaker 1: be a scientist or even very scientifically literate to tell
Speaker 1: that one of these answers refers to real science and
Speaker 1: the other one does not. But the question you should
Speaker 1: ask yourself is what is the criterion you have used.
Speaker 1: You've intuitively used some kind of rule to rule in
Speaker 1: one of those answers as real science and rule out
Speaker 1: the other one as fake side and pseudoscience. It sounds
Speaker 1: like garbage. So you know the difference when you see it,
Speaker 1: But what is the principle that actually makes the difference right?
Speaker 1: And and this question becomes ever more important when you
Speaker 1: when you move away from the obvious examples and you
Speaker 1: get into that h that stretch of gray area that
Speaker 1: that that borders the dividing line. Um. Now, in terms
Speaker 1: of pseudoscience, I do want to throw in real quick
Speaker 1: that the oldest known use of the word pseudoscience dates
Speaker 1: back from when the historian James Petite Andrew referred to
Speaker 1: alchemy as quote a fantastical pseudoscience. And certainly, un you
Speaker 1: can make that the case for that with alchemy. Well
Speaker 1: maybe if you have a closed mine, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: some gold eventually. I mean, in some ways alchemy was
Speaker 1: kind of a protoscience, but the the actual scientific properties
Speaker 1: in alchemy, and this is kind of a topic for
Speaker 1: another day, um are kind of lost amid all the
Speaker 1: the cult concerns. But in the philosophy of science, exactly
Speaker 1: this problem, this problem of what rule do you use
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between science and pseudoscience has a name.
Speaker 1: It's a named problem, right, Yeah, the demarcation problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: drawing the boundary, setting the border between one side and
Speaker 1: the other, between truth and falsehood, between good and bad,
Speaker 1: between sin and virtue. I mean it and it sounds
Speaker 1: pretty simple, but it's a it's a very important concern
Speaker 1: for the philosophy of science. For a couple of different reasons.
Speaker 1: From a purely theoretical point of view, uh, it's important
Speaker 1: philosophers talking to each other about what things mean and
Speaker 1: the depth of their meaning. But also from a very
Speaker 1: practical point and it's because obviously, science is humanity's most
Speaker 1: reliable font of knowledge. It's the tower we've built that
Speaker 1: we use to ascend to new heights. Uh, technologically speaking,
Speaker 1: cosmologically speaking, it's our it's our best method for advancing solutions,
Speaker 1: and something we're constantly touting in advertising, healthcare, criminal justice,
Speaker 1: environmental policy, entertainment, politics, and everything in between. So science
Speaker 1: is applied to science, isn't just uh, intellectual endeavor taking
Speaker 1: place in a vacuum. Once we have a scientific conclusion,
Speaker 1: we very often take that conclusion out and do something
Speaker 1: with it. Yeah, it's not just in the monastery on
Speaker 1: the hill. It's down in the marketplace, it's in the household.
Speaker 1: It's it's factoring in your decisions. I mean, like we're
Speaker 1: saying earlier, it's one thing to to hear someone's diet
Speaker 1: tribe about some very fringe e topic and and instantly judge, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's complete malarchy. That's studioscience. But where it gets
Speaker 1: gets weirder is when you're picking up a product at
Speaker 1: the at the supermarket, you know, or you're you're you're
Speaker 1: the vitamin supplement exactly hand, and then you start trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, Wait, this is speaking the language of science.
Speaker 1: It's not hitting those crazy keywords that my cousin knows
Speaker 1: throwing out at this imagined wedding. What am I to do?
Speaker 1: Mega vitea fan burns fat fast. Should I trust this?
Speaker 1: I mean? Yeah? So it has real implications in the
Speaker 1: real world that it impacts your wallet, and it impacts
Speaker 1: the budgets of countries that fund scientific research. You don't
Speaker 1: want the government funding research in something that is complete bunk.
Speaker 1: So getting to this question of demarcation, like how do
Speaker 1: you tell the difference? What rule do you use? One
Speaker 1: one common dictionary definition of pseudoscience is something like quote
Speaker 1: a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being
Speaker 1: based on the scientific method. Well that's not very helpful,
Speaker 1: is it right, because that that just it's circular. It
Speaker 1: invokes the concept of science to say what's not science?
Speaker 1: So it's not helpful for solving the demarcation problem because
Speaker 1: it just says pseudoscience is that which appears to be
Speaker 1: science but is not those who are entering the tower
Speaker 1: of science and not doing science there, or something to
Speaker 1: that effect, because yeah, because the uh, the the scientific
Speaker 1: method is still present, at least it's invoked, right, So
Speaker 1: it becomes difficult to decipher. Yeah, So to really solve
Speaker 1: the problem, you'd want to come up with some descriptive
Speaker 1: rule that exclusively describes science. It's like a descriptive statement
Speaker 1: that describes everything that is science and rules out everything
Speaker 1: that is not science. But it's hard to come up
Speaker 1: with a rule like that, isn't it. Yeah. I mean again,
Speaker 1: especially as you you become closer and closer to the
Speaker 1: boundary line. You know, it's um because it we'll discuss here.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like imagine the border between two
Speaker 1: states and you have you have a couple, you have
Speaker 1: a couple of towns, right, and ones just immediately on
Speaker 1: one side of the state line, the others on the other.
Speaker 1: And if you're applying of it's a very strict understanding
Speaker 1: of boundary lines here, then this one is definitely in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: and this one's definitely in Tennessee. But then if you
Speaker 1: start saying, well, actually, there's a little room, uh to
Speaker 1: to go on either side. Then it just then you're confounded,
Speaker 1: All right, is this one in Tennessee or is this
Speaker 1: one in Arkansas? How about this one? Are they both
Speaker 1: in both states? Or is it just how I feel
Speaker 1: when I visit that town? Right? So, a lot of
Speaker 1: the solutions to the demarcation problem try to draw some
Speaker 1: clear line. Okay, here we have an exclusive rule that
Speaker 1: makes the distinction. So I know a lot of scientists
Speaker 1: and some philosophers of science would probably want to make
Speaker 1: a distinction based on empiricism as as the first criteria here. Right. So,
Speaker 1: empiricism is the idea that it involves observations. You know,
Speaker 1: it's what you see or what you can measure externally.
Speaker 1: That science can't be just an internal logical exercise that
Speaker 1: has no contact with something you see happening in the
Speaker 1: real world. Yeah, there has to. It has it's evidence based. Right. Then.
Speaker 1: Of course you've also got the you know, the scientific
Speaker 1: method that you learned in elementary school. Some people would
Speaker 1: look at that and say, okay, you know, that's basically
Speaker 1: how science works. You ask a question, you make an
Speaker 1: educated guess, that's your hypothesis. You do some kind of
Speaker 1: empirical test on observable reality to see if your guess
Speaker 1: is correct. Then you analyze the results and draw conclusions,
Speaker 1: and you know, that's a good simplified version for kids
Speaker 1: to learn. Yeah, I mean, how do you walk into
Speaker 1: a dark room and find out what the what what
Speaker 1: the room contains and accurately judge it without you know,
Speaker 1: hitting your head on something. But there's a problem with
Speaker 1: that if we're trying to describe science as it happens
Speaker 1: in the real world of professional discoveries, because it doesn't.
Speaker 1: That method doesn't very closely describe the process by which
Speaker 1: we came up with all kinds of important and correct
Speaker 1: scientific theories in history, Like lots of theories in physics,
Speaker 1: for example, we're just conceived simply as abstract thought experiments,
Speaker 1: and they went for a long time without empirical testing.
Speaker 1: Now we've empirically tested them and we know. But they
Speaker 1: just started in Einstein's head. There are a number of
Speaker 1: scientific concept that were conceived or certainly that the the
Speaker 1: people behind them attributed their conception to dreams, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to fit the dream world into any
Speaker 1: serious contemplation of scientific method, right. Yeah, So there are
Speaker 1: plenty of examples you can go through through history of
Speaker 1: scientific theories that we didn't have empirical confirmation of for
Speaker 1: a long time, even after people had accepted them as
Speaker 1: probably true. You know, one good example that it comes
Speaker 1: up in the debate we're gonna be talking about today
Speaker 1: is the question of atoms. For a long time, scientists
Speaker 1: knew that matter was based on atoms, but there was
Speaker 1: no test they could do to confirm the existence of atoms.
Speaker 1: Now there are, fortunately, but we didn't. We didn't have
Speaker 1: those tests for a long time. Another problem with the
Speaker 1: basic scientific method you learn an elementary school is that
Speaker 1: if you just have some bad methodology, you can rule
Speaker 1: in plenty of pseudoscience. Right Like, if you just use
Speaker 1: the scientific method, but you use it poorly, you can
Speaker 1: prove the existence of psychics, ghosts, aliens, whatever you want. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we see this time and time again. Right,
Speaker 1: There'll be one guy who is able to create a
Speaker 1: zero gravity state in a lab, and then any and
Speaker 1: everyone else tries to replicate it, and they don't get
Speaker 1: the same results. And therefore either either what everybody's wrong,
Speaker 1: and this one guy got it right once. No, it's
Speaker 1: the reverse. Yeah, he used the method. He just did
Speaker 1: a really bad job of using the method. Another way
Speaker 1: that I think some people would address how to define
Speaker 1: science and uh and solve the demarcation problem is I
Speaker 1: think totally useless. And they define science in a kind
Speaker 1: of post talk back engineered pragmatic sense, as in, they
Speaker 1: define sciences the method of inquiry which produces correct and
Speaker 1: useful results. This is obviously not a helpful solution to
Speaker 1: demarcation problem. Now, if you're hearing all of this and thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: but then again, I mean, scientists are just doing their
Speaker 1: scientific work. Do they really need to worry about all
Speaker 1: of this, Uh, this philosophical back and forth, Like, is
Speaker 1: this just a lot of talk that doesn't really amount
Speaker 1: to anything? I would argue, No, it is not. I
Speaker 1: think these philosophical concepts are crucial to to doing good science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, especially when you when you start facing the
Speaker 1: realization that you can't just do the science right. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a wonderful quote from Daniel Dennett from
Speaker 1: his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which we've discussed this in
Speaker 1: a previous episode, but he says, quote, scientists sometimes deceive
Speaker 1: themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only at best
Speaker 1: decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science,
Speaker 1: and that they themselves are immune to the confusions that
Speaker 1: philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no
Speaker 1: such thing as philosophy free science. There is only science
Speaker 1: whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. I
Speaker 1: entirely agree with that quote. I think that's right on
Speaker 1: the money. I mean, if you hear a scientist say,
Speaker 1: I don't bother with philosophy. I'm not interested in philosophical
Speaker 1: content concepts. I just do the science. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like if you had a person running for president who says, look,
Speaker 1: I'm not political, I'm just gonna govern. Would you trust
Speaker 1: that person? I mean, the reality is what they are
Speaker 1: going to be governed by some kind of philosophy, whether
Speaker 1: they acknowledge it or not. And uh in the person
Speaker 1: who claims not to have a philosophy or not to
Speaker 1: have you know, any kind of ideology guiding them is
Speaker 1: just advertising the fact that they haven't thought very deeply
Speaker 1: about this. Yeah, they because I like the idea of
Speaker 1: a non political uh individual just judging without and just
Speaker 1: ruling without any kind of uh you know, weird hang
Speaker 1: ups and constraints and agenda. But for that to really work,
Speaker 1: you'd have to have like a superhuman you have to
Speaker 1: have someone with like a self moving soul. Was someone
Speaker 1: who could who could think and approach the task at
Speaker 1: hand with just pure logic, unmoved by the undercurrents of opinion, bias,
Speaker 1: trauma or longing. Uh. You know. Part of the the
Speaker 1: the issue here is that science itself, with the scientific
Speaker 1: method as its backbone, it's it's kind of a perfect engine,
Speaker 1: right uh and and we are it's flawed operators. So
Speaker 1: for perhaps you know what we need here, I would
Speaker 1: look at like the done universe, we need like Mentat scientists,
Speaker 1: um or we would need Dounyane scientists or bodhisattvas of
Speaker 1: scientific inquiry. What do you mean, Duniane? What is that? Oh?
Speaker 1: They're a there are people that are kind of like
Speaker 1: Mentats and m are Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse saga. So
Speaker 1: they've been able to just really through just generations and
Speaker 1: generations of selective breeding and uh and and personal training,
Speaker 1: they've managed to enter the two to breed a people
Speaker 1: that are completely uh, in the now completely in control
Speaker 1: all of their of their soul and their mind states.
Speaker 1: So they're they're not governed by uh, you know, past concerns,
Speaker 1: and when they encounter people that are not doniating, they
Speaker 1: can just completely manipulate them because they sort of stand
Speaker 1: outside of that path. Humans engineered to no longer have
Speaker 1: preferences to only be computers sort of yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1: And but that's the other thing. Maybe what we need
Speaker 1: is an advanced hyper computer, some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: super AI. They could do all of the science that
Speaker 1: could that could be science without the human concerns. But
Speaker 1: we don't have that right now. We just have the
Speaker 1: humans with some help from the computers. Right. So today,
Speaker 1: the main topic that we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: is the idea of empiricism and falsifiability in science. And
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to what those what falsifiability means in
Speaker 1: a second, but also about whether we have entered a
Speaker 1: phase in science where there is room for a concept
Speaker 1: to known as post empiricism. And if that sounds crazy
Speaker 1: to you, we will explain what the arguments are in
Speaker 1: just a bit. But we should bring it back to
Speaker 1: the history of this demarcation problem. How do you separate
Speaker 1: the science from the pseudoscience? And one of the most
Speaker 1: common answers given by scientists today would be traceful back
Speaker 1: to the twentieth century philosopher of science Carl Popper. So
Speaker 1: who was Carl Popper? Now? Popper was an Austrian British
Speaker 1: philosopher generally regarded as one of the twentieth centuries greatest
Speaker 1: philosophers of science. And he identified demarcation as the chief
Speaker 1: problem in the philosophy of science. Again, how to judge
Speaker 1: science separated from from pseudoscience, separate the sin from the virtue.
Speaker 1: Here to draw a really firm line in the sand
Speaker 1: that we can stick by and judge everything accordingly. And
Speaker 1: he thought he came up with an answer to the problem, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he thought he came up with with a pretty solid answer.
Speaker 1: And really I was reading about his life like he
Speaker 1: stuck to his guns, like towards the end of his life,
Speaker 1: you know, he had he had He had plenty of
Speaker 1: critics who said, actually, just doesn't work, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: We'll get into the specifics in a second. But he
Speaker 1: was devoted and he would he spent his time either
Speaker 1: clarifying what he had said or shooting down his critics. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's specked with his guns on this. But what
Speaker 1: was his answer? How can you tell the difference between
Speaker 1: science and pseudoscience? What qualifies something as real science? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is what is the litmus test? Right? The answer
Speaker 1: he gave is falsifiability. So what does that mean? So,
Speaker 1: according to Popper, in order for a proposition right or
Speaker 1: wrong to be scientific in nature, it has to be falsifiable,
Speaker 1: meaning you have to be able to describe empirical results,
Speaker 1: test results in the real world that would show the
Speaker 1: proposition to be false. And then in order to to
Speaker 1: strengthen the theory, to build confidence in it, you have
Speaker 1: to continually seek these exceptions to your rule. You have
Speaker 1: to keep looking for ways to break your theory, and
Speaker 1: you have to fail to attain them over and over. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And this means there has to be such thing as
Speaker 1: a critical test for any given proposition proposition in order
Speaker 1: for it to be scientific in nature. Right. Uh? And
Speaker 1: so let's give some examples in in science, just throughout
Speaker 1: a theory what the rule is, and then explain how
Speaker 1: how could you falsify it? So here's one. Einstein's special
Speaker 1: theory of relativity says the speed of light and a
Speaker 1: vacuum is the same for all observers. Now, if you
Speaker 1: could get people in spaceships moving at different speeds to
Speaker 1: measure the speed of light and a vacuum and get
Speaker 1: different results, than special relativity is wrong. It's falsified. The
Speaker 1: theory is, in principle, falsifiable. Another one would be how
Speaker 1: about common descent. Uh. Common descent says that all life
Speaker 1: on Earth is related and it evolved from a single
Speaker 1: organism known as the last Universal common ancestor or LUCA.
Speaker 1: So if we looked at the genomes of plants and
Speaker 1: animals and bacteria l the different kingdoms of life, and
Speaker 1: we found that they had all completely different genes and
Speaker 1: use different genetic tools to accomplish the same basic survival
Speaker 1: tasks like say metabolism, metabolizing sugars or something, this would
Speaker 1: probably falsify common descent. It would make it look like
Speaker 1: the kingdoms of life had multiple different origins. But that's
Speaker 1: not what we find. So there there is support for
Speaker 1: common descent. And here's one example that's often was often
Speaker 1: touted by Paper himself. So astronomers of the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: looked to the the the orbit of Uranus. Okay, something
Speaker 1: seemed a bit off here, so two separate astronomers they
Speaker 1: pointed out that the orbit of Uranis could be explained
Speaker 1: via Newtonian physics as being caused by a seventh and
Speaker 1: previously unknown planet, which of course turns out to be Neptune.
Speaker 1: Astronomers uh subsequently discover Neptune, and it's exactly where these
Speaker 1: two different astronomers predicted that it would be. So Papa
Speaker 1: argued that in this Newton's theory was subjected to a
Speaker 1: critical test and it passed. But critics would have a
Speaker 1: different view of this. Critics such as uh Emmor Lactose
Speaker 1: point out that if they'd been in error, if the
Speaker 1: if the two scientists here had been wrong, if we
Speaker 1: hadn't found Neptune exactly where it is, we wouldn't have
Speaker 1: thrown out Newtonian physics right. We would have looked for
Speaker 1: other possible culprits, any of the number of reasons that
Speaker 1: those that their their their theory here could have been wrong.
Speaker 1: So it was hardly a test of Newtonian physics at all.
Speaker 1: The falsification corroboration disjunction might very well, just be too simplistic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's true that there are plenty of criticisms of
Speaker 1: the poparian Is that the word poparian the the falsification
Speaker 1: criteria in the philosophy of science. But but this has
Speaker 1: been one of the big ones that people have have
Speaker 1: latched onto over the past century. Now to continue exploring falsification.
Speaker 1: On the contrary, imagine what it's like to have a
Speaker 1: proposition where you can't come up with any in principle
Speaker 1: empirical test that would provide strong evidence against it. If
Speaker 1: you have something like that, this is not a good thing.
Speaker 1: So imagine a psychic medium claims to get information from
Speaker 1: the spirit world. Okay, well, well, let's come up with
Speaker 1: some tests for this. Let's say, let's test the information
Speaker 1: that he's getting from the spirit world and find out
Speaker 1: if it accurately reflects information about dead people that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been able to know. He can always say, well, actually,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, my powers aren't going to work in
Speaker 1: the presence of the negative energy created by skeptics. Uh so, well, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we can put some believers in place and blind
Speaker 1: them to the test and see if you're getting accurate information.
Speaker 1: The psychic could still say, well, wait a minute, there
Speaker 1: are also malicious spirits who are responsible for feeding me
Speaker 1: incorrect information. Uh so in in the end, there is
Speaker 1: no evidence that could really count against his powers. Anything
Speaker 1: that could count against it is explained away. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see this with a lot of supernatural ideas, like
Speaker 1: one of the big ones, of course, one that I
Speaker 1: often think about is the hand of God. Uh. Analogy here, So,
Speaker 1: if God exists outside of our universe, all right, if
Speaker 1: he's outside of our universe, we can't really do anything
Speaker 1: to disapprove or prove, right, because he's not a part
Speaker 1: of the observable universe that we can test and we
Speaker 1: can measure. Now, it's been argued that if the hand
Speaker 1: of God then reaches into our universe to do things
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, create life, turn a city,
Speaker 1: to solve whatever, then that hand has to interact with
Speaker 1: our universe. It has to interact with atoms and molecules,
Speaker 1: and therefore we would be able to measure a supernatural presence,
Speaker 1: a presence from the outside reaching into our own by
Speaker 1: the way it moved. Our molecules are atoms our world.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so that makes it sound like the presence
Speaker 1: of supernatural interaction should be in theory testable. But when
Speaker 1: you bring that up people because because then you say,
Speaker 1: when we've ever observed that, people will say, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he doesn't have to he or she does not have
Speaker 1: to move the molecules. And then but then you're just saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: then they don't have to obey any of the laws,
Speaker 1: and so it's super untestable. Right, You're removing all possible
Speaker 1: conditions that could falsify what you're claiming. Right, it kind
Speaker 1: of becomes like an argument between kindergarteners about who just
Speaker 1: blasted who with a laser gun on the playground, Like
Speaker 1: they can both deny that they've been vaporized by a
Speaker 1: laser gun based on, uh, you know, increasingly preposterous ideas
Speaker 1: about how the laser gun worked and what kind of
Speaker 1: imaginary armor they were wearing. Right, But of course, theories
Speaker 1: that are unfalsifiable in nature don't necessarily just appeal to
Speaker 1: the paranormals, psychics and you know, ghosts and aliens and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. You could also have secular unfalsifiable theories.
Speaker 1: How about this one, We are living inside a computer simulation?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I love this one. Now, there might be
Speaker 1: some ways that smart people could come up with to
Speaker 1: test whether not this is true. You could say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, on a computer simulation, we'd expect to find X.
Speaker 1: If we don't find X, that's evidence against it. Maybe,
Speaker 1: But as far as I know, there's no test you
Speaker 1: could perform to falsify the statement that we're living in
Speaker 1: a computer simulation. There's no way to prove this isn't correct.
Speaker 1: And thus it's just sort of like one of those things.
Speaker 1: Well that's interesting to think about, but it seems unscientific
Speaker 1: in nature, because if we're in a perfect simulation, we're
Speaker 1: in a perfect simulation, and how would you possibly see
Speaker 1: outside of it? It's um, it's kind of like this. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a fabulous description of human sight that was related
Speaker 1: to me over the weekend, and that's the idea that
Speaker 1: when you look at something with your through your vision, um,
Speaker 1: you're essentially regarding a timeline of the evolution of human vision.
Speaker 1: So the corners of your eyes, you you're encountering just
Speaker 1: blurry shapes, less color, less detail, and as you move
Speaker 1: in towards the center of your eye, that's where you
Speaker 1: and actually make out the details and and and very
Speaker 1: precise movements and changes and and so it's a it's
Speaker 1: a timeline that converges at the center. But then that
Speaker 1: makes it kind of difficult and not impossible to envision
Speaker 1: things further along in the timeline because it's not a
Speaker 1: linear system, you know. Huh, it's a it's it's closed
Speaker 1: to us. I guess if that makes sense. That's a
Speaker 1: very interesting statement. I've never heard that before. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I keep keep thinking about it because it's I think
Speaker 1: it's appliable to a lot of things, a lot of
Speaker 1: topics concerning the limits of our of our observation, the
Speaker 1: limits of our of our experience, completely unrelated side note.
Speaker 1: Did you know that if you have people hold up
Speaker 1: colored flags at the very edge of your vision, you
Speaker 1: will not be able to tell what color they are? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that makes sense because to go with the timeline analogy,
Speaker 1: you are seeing out of your corner. You're seeing with
Speaker 1: a very primitive form of vision. But we have the
Speaker 1: illusion that the corners of our eyes have color to
Speaker 1: them when you look out, Yeah, my peripheral vision has
Speaker 1: just as much color as the center of my vision.
Speaker 1: You can test this and show it to be false
Speaker 1: that statement is falsifiable and has been falsified because when
Speaker 1: you hold up these red flags at the very edge
Speaker 1: of your vision, you can't tell the difference between red
Speaker 1: blue orange. Try it out. Yeah, yeah, no matter what
Speaker 1: your memory says, because your mind is up stitching it
Speaker 1: all together into some form that makes sense at least
Speaker 1: you know, at a glance. Okay, so we've got this
Speaker 1: criterion here for for the demarcation problem. Real science is falsifiable.
Speaker 1: It makes predictions, and it says, if this were true,
Speaker 1: my theory would be false. Ideas that don't conform to
Speaker 1: this are in our experience, in our experience, incredibly annoying
Speaker 1: to interrogate. And also, I would say, in our experience,
Speaker 1: do not generate accurate predictions, technologies, or new knowledge. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if it's just if it's an idea that you
Speaker 1: can't test, you can't prove, you can't do experiments on it.
Speaker 1: All you can do is just sort of is either
Speaker 1: nod along or shake your head. You're not gonna conduct
Speaker 1: any experiments and learn something more about the the the
Speaker 1: inner workings of reality. Yeah. One last distinction I want
Speaker 1: to make before we start to get to this weird
Speaker 1: world of the idea of post empiricism. So there's another
Speaker 1: type of empirical theory of science that's simply a corall
Speaker 1: area I would say a falsification, and that's verification. And
Speaker 1: this is actually the older theory. So it's they're both empirical.
Speaker 1: They're really two halves of the same coin. Right. But
Speaker 1: with verification, you make a positive prediction and then you
Speaker 1: test to see if that's the case. So my prediction
Speaker 1: is that all cows on Earth are brown. Um, so
Speaker 1: you go out and look, and let's say you find
Speaker 1: some brown cows. Oh, what do you know? My theory
Speaker 1: is correct. So you can sort of see the problem
Speaker 1: with this. You can keep testing and looking for brown
Speaker 1: cows and finding brown cows, and if you were to
Speaker 1: regard these the fact that you keep finding brown on
Speaker 1: cows as an evidence that your theory is correct. Instead,
Speaker 1: what you should be doing is looking for non brown cows,
Speaker 1: and you keep looking for them, and eventually if you
Speaker 1: find a non brown cow, then your theory has been falsified. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like finding a black swan, Yeah, and then it
Speaker 1: changes what you know about swans as they actually exist. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, the fact that all the statement that all
Speaker 1: cows are brown is wrong. That is wrong, even if
Speaker 1: it is formulated in such a way that it could
Speaker 1: be falsified. An unfalsifiable version of the same idea would
Speaker 1: be cows that appear brown to all observers and instruments
Speaker 1: are nevertheless not really brown. That that is worse than
Speaker 1: being wrong. It's not even wrong, it's unfalsifiable. But so
Speaker 1: one takeaway from this, of course, is that you never
Speaker 1: actually verify a theory under the criterion of falsifiability. There's
Speaker 1: no such thing as one confidence that a theory is correct.
Speaker 1: You just keep building up higher and higher levels of
Speaker 1: confidence every time you try to find an exception, every
Speaker 1: time you try to falsify it, and you can't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that I mean, in that sense, the boundaries of
Speaker 1: scientific understanding are constantly shifting, the constantly changing um at
Speaker 1: least you know in the realms beyond like extremely verified fact. Right,
Speaker 1: But his red wine good for you? Is coffee good
Speaker 1: for you? This is a line that is that is
Speaker 1: continually changing. Right, And that's a problem because that that
Speaker 1: that question is not well defined. What do you mean
Speaker 1: good for me? On average? How do you compare the
Speaker 1: different goods versus bads, goods and bads? What are studied
Speaker 1: by science? All right, we're gonna take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but when we come back, we're going to get into
Speaker 1: post empiricism. Okay, So we've established that some scientists and
Speaker 1: philosophers of science have latched onto this idea of falsifiabile
Speaker 1: or at least some version of empirical confirmation, as as
Speaker 1: the criterion you use to tell science from pseudoscience. But
Speaker 1: are there any scientific problems that would lead a non
Speaker 1: quack that would lead a respectable scientist who does real
Speaker 1: work with with real data, to propose a non falsifiable hypothesis. Actually,
Speaker 1: there are some cases where we have very smart, very
Speaker 1: respectable scientists who are doing work on hypotheses that are
Speaker 1: widely agreed to be non falsifiable, at least today. And
Speaker 1: so how about fundamental physics. What's at the bottom of
Speaker 1: our physical theory of the universe? Well depends on who
Speaker 1: you ask, But if you ask a certain portion of
Speaker 1: the scientific community and the philosophic community, they will say
Speaker 1: string is at the bottom of everything. Yes, And we're
Speaker 1: of course talking about string theory. Now I know what
Speaker 1: you're thinking out there, are you thinking, Hey, Robert and
Speaker 1: j I didn't sign up for string theory on this episode.
Speaker 1: While you're getting some string theory. But well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: blow through just a very quick definition of what it
Speaker 1: is a reminder of what it is so that we
Speaker 1: can proceed. And uh, we're we're gonna be fairly limited
Speaker 1: in this, I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, We're not gonna
Speaker 1: go in too deep on this. Uh, I mean you
Speaker 1: can really leave it at just imagining a cartoon character
Speaker 1: and a sweater and what happens when someone pulls on
Speaker 1: the threat at the bottom of everything unravels. That is true,
Speaker 1: that is the full scientific definition. But but to go
Speaker 1: a little deeper, Um, okay, So you have particle physicists
Speaker 1: to define elementary particles or fundamental particles as the smallest
Speaker 1: building blocks in the universe. In other words, particles such
Speaker 1: as leptons and quarks have no substructure. There As small
Speaker 1: as it gets, you can't split them up. Now, that's
Speaker 1: not the case for string theorists to think we need
Speaker 1: to venture deeper or smaller than our current technology allows.
Speaker 1: So they propose that each so called fundamental particle fundamental
Speaker 1: particle actually contains a tiny vibrating one dimensional loop of string.
Speaker 1: The vibration of the string determines the charge and mass
Speaker 1: of the greater particle. So superstring theories take this idea
Speaker 1: and build the entire universe from the bottom up. Uh
Speaker 1: And it's it's a challenging task. And that's why we
Speaker 1: speak of string of theories in the plural, because there
Speaker 1: are several different string theories that attempt to make it
Speaker 1: all work. At least ten dimensions are called for um.
Speaker 1: A lot of math physicists proposed that any dimensions beyond
Speaker 1: time and visible space are folded up out of sight
Speaker 1: into these you know, very complex uh, extra dimensional shapes
Speaker 1: that you often see are rendered both computer graphics on
Speaker 1: string theory articles, tiny extra dimensions that that that we
Speaker 1: can't even measure. They're they're just too small for us
Speaker 1: to perceive, crawling with shadow creatures that come out to
Speaker 1: grab children. Um. So and and it is and is
Speaker 1: that that what indicates a superstring theory is still developing,
Speaker 1: meaning that physicists continue to work out the kinks in
Speaker 1: the individual stringth theories, but they're eventually What they're aiming
Speaker 1: to do is is fulfill Einstein's unrealized goal of unifying
Speaker 1: general relativity with quantum theory. And that's why string theory
Speaker 1: is also sometimes called a theory of everything, because it
Speaker 1: would serve someday as a foundation for all future scientists,
Speaker 1: scientific discovery, and innovation. The idea that it is an
Speaker 1: incomplete section in this grand bridge. Yeah. So another way
Speaker 1: string theories often characterized is that that it's a unification attempts.
Speaker 1: It attempts to bring together macrophysics, things like relativity you
Speaker 1: know that happened on huge energies and and and scales
Speaker 1: with microphysics, the stuff in the quantum world, you know,
Speaker 1: very very small. Right now, we have strong theories of
Speaker 1: microphysics that explain very well what we see at those scales,
Speaker 1: and we have strong theories of relativity that explain very
Speaker 1: well what we see, you know, with gravity at huge scales.
Speaker 1: But they just don't mesh together very well. And so
Speaker 1: string theory would attempt to explain all those things with
Speaker 1: one underlying theory that that implies both of them. And
Speaker 1: in reality, the theory is just a set of mathematical models,
Speaker 1: right It's mathematical models showing the behavior of these strings
Speaker 1: and how they could produce the effects of the universe
Speaker 1: we see at these different scales. But there's a problem, right.
Speaker 1: String physics phenomena are too tiny to observe even with
Speaker 1: our most powerful experimental instruments. They can't be found by
Speaker 1: our particle colliders or anything else were likely to build
Speaker 1: in the near future. So we can make a mathematical
Speaker 1: string theory model that very beautifully explains everything we already know,
Speaker 1: but we can't use it to predict any new physical
Speaker 1: results that we'd be able to detect and use to
Speaker 1: confirm or falsify it. So that's sort of a problem.
Speaker 1: Right Is this still science? Wait a minute, now, if
Speaker 1: we're just coming up with mathematical instruments that explain what
Speaker 1: we already know but don't make predictions that we can
Speaker 1: experimentally test, well, is it science and is it useful? Yeah?
Speaker 1: It's It sounds like it's like putting the car in
Speaker 1: if not parked, then at least neutral, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's going to stop moving after a while, right right? Uh,
Speaker 1: here's another one. How about cosmology? Oh yeah, what's the
Speaker 1: ultimate nature of the universe. It's a big question with
Speaker 1: big answers, Big answers that we often cannot test. Um
Speaker 1: generally cannot test and going you on one side just
Speaker 1: say the existence of God or God's but also you
Speaker 1: get into multiverse theory, the idea that our universe is
Speaker 1: just one of many and essentially the library of babble,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, so it's that movie multiplicity. Wait, what
Speaker 1: was that movie? Is that the one one more jetly
Speaker 1: kills all the other jet leads to game power? No,
Speaker 1: I think that's the one. That's a really good one. Though,
Speaker 1: now I'm thinking, what's the one that has lots of
Speaker 1: Michael Keaton? Yeah, that the clone Michael Keaton's I think
Speaker 1: it's multiplicity, Okay, yeah, no, no no, no, I was confusing
Speaker 1: it mentally with virtuosity. The one oh that has with
Speaker 1: the Russell Crowe is like a synthetic human clone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Denzel Washington, Yeah, yeah, each other. I just remember
Speaker 1: he had like there's a blue Blood or something like that. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: like string theory, that there's this idea of the multiverse
Speaker 1: that's pretty much untestable. It's but it could be a
Speaker 1: very elegant outworking of the data we already have. So
Speaker 1: we have a bunch of observations. We say, if there
Speaker 1: were many, many universes. It would explain some of the
Speaker 1: things we see. But we can't make a prediction based
Speaker 1: on the belief in the many, many universes that we
Speaker 1: can test. At least there's not a clear one. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think I have read some physicists suggesting that multiverse
Speaker 1: could maybe be potential really tested in theory, based on
Speaker 1: something about spacetime geometry. But I think that's an ongoing
Speaker 1: debate that I don't fully understand. Yeah, a lot of
Speaker 1: this kind of it boils down to the prospect of
Speaker 1: building a bridge into the darkness, and how far into
Speaker 1: the darkness are you willing to build that bridge accepting
Speaker 1: that the necessary substructure will be there? Right? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: in this case, if we are talking about science, and
Speaker 1: you know, real science and maybe multiverse cosmology or string
Speaker 1: theory being some people would have a problem with that
Speaker 1: statement exactly. No, no, no, I'm saying, if we consider
Speaker 1: these things science, uh, it seems like we need to
Speaker 1: sort of revise what are demarcation problem solution is right,
Speaker 1: assuming we were starting with false liability, which a lot
Speaker 1: of modern philosophers of science probably wouldn't um. And so
Speaker 1: here's where we get into the idea of post empiricism,
Speaker 1: the idea of so just meaning after empiricism, after only
Speaker 1: being based on observations and physical tests. And I want
Speaker 1: to talk about a theoretical physicist turned philosopher named Richard
Speaker 1: Davitt who has studied and written in favor of the
Speaker 1: concept of post empiricism on behalf of string theory. And
Speaker 1: he he had this interview with three Am magazine that
Speaker 1: was published in July. He but he also wrote a
Speaker 1: book called String Theory and the Scientific Method, and he
Speaker 1: tries to make a case for a new sort of
Speaker 1: philosophy of evaluating the scientific merits of theories that isn't
Speaker 1: just based on empirical testing. Uh, that sounds kind of crazy, right,
Speaker 1: But let's see what he has to say. So, you've
Speaker 1: got string theory. You've got this problem that you can
Speaker 1: paint a self consistent picture of the mathematical properties of strings.
Speaker 1: And if they existed, they'd answer a lot of questions, right,
Speaker 1: they would help unify our view of physics. But there's
Speaker 1: currently no way we know of to directly detect strings
Speaker 1: or their effects. So in what sense is string theory
Speaker 1: different from saying invisible acid gremlins push all the particles
Speaker 1: in the universe around to produce the effects we interpret
Speaker 1: as microphysics and general relativity. Is it any better and
Speaker 1: and Davitt would argue that these are not equally valid claims,
Speaker 1: that string theory is actually much better as a scientific claim,
Speaker 1: even if it's not empirically testable. And the thing is
Speaker 1: that that feels like a true statement, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: not everyone would agree. So instead, Davitt thinks that even
Speaker 1: in cases where you can't falsify a theory empirically, you
Speaker 1: can establish confidence in the theory with the use of
Speaker 1: philosophical and probabilistic arguments. Sort of about the research program
Speaker 1: that produced the theory. It's sort of a meta science.
Speaker 1: It's judging the quality of science by the scientific situation
Speaker 1: that created it. Okay, So let's try to give some
Speaker 1: examples of the arguments he would give on behalf of
Speaker 1: something like string theory. One argument is the lack of
Speaker 1: alternative theories. Okay, So it kind of goes back to
Speaker 1: Holmes logic. Yeah, it's it's the only game in town.
Speaker 1: Davitt says, string theory is the only theory that integrates
Speaker 1: into one overall theory. Our topical understanding of high energy
Speaker 1: physics based on gauge field theory and our understanding of
Speaker 1: cosmology based on general relativity. So he's saying that there
Speaker 1: just aren't any other theories that explain all this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's the only one we've come up with that seems viable.
Speaker 1: And Dovit also argues that in the past, when we
Speaker 1: had no alternative to a consistent theory, that theory was
Speaker 1: often later shown to be correct. So there's sort of
Speaker 1: a precedent for saying, well, when scientists are working on
Speaker 1: a question and they come up with a theory that
Speaker 1: answers the question, even if it's not empirically testable at
Speaker 1: the time, we later learned that they were right if
Speaker 1: it was the only theory they could come up with. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that makes sense, right, You to proceed to actually
Speaker 1: push forward, sometimes you have to envision what that reality
Speaker 1: may be. You have to create this model and then
Speaker 1: see how it plays out over time exactly. So he
Speaker 1: also says, look, it has proven conceptually useful. That's a
Speaker 1: second argument. So Dobvitt suggests that string theorists have given
Speaker 1: physicists insights into other problems in physics that they weren't
Speaker 1: originally setting out to solve when the theory was conceived,
Speaker 1: so it explains more than it was originally meant to explain.
Speaker 1: That seems like another good tick in the evidence column.
Speaker 1: In other words, it's not predicting a physical outcome that
Speaker 1: we tested, but it's sort of yielding some mathematical results
Speaker 1: that that that fit together in interesting ways. And then
Speaker 1: the last major argument he gives is sort of that
Speaker 1: the way I would put it is that it grows
Speaker 1: from proper scientific soil. You know, it's not like saying,
Speaker 1: uh saying acid gremlins. That it comes out of a
Speaker 1: research project of high energy physics. And this research project
Speaker 1: of high energy physics has generated all kinds of other
Speaker 1: ideas that have been testable empirically and have been accurate.
Speaker 1: All right, well, all three of these are making sense.
Speaker 1: He seems logical, sure, And he gives another example from
Speaker 1: the past. I think it's when we mentioned earlier, but
Speaker 1: he says, you know, if if you look at the past,
Speaker 1: what about atomists, people who thought that the matter in
Speaker 1: the world was made of atoms. According to Davitt, scientists
Speaker 1: thought that the world was made of atoms long before
Speaker 1: they had any way of experimentally confirming predictions of atomic theory.
Speaker 1: Of course we have those experiments now, but atomic theory
Speaker 1: was the only serious theory of matter on the table,
Speaker 1: so there were no alternatives. It yielded insights that it
Speaker 1: didn't set out to yield, Like, it explained more than
Speaker 1: it was designed to explain. That's his second case with
Speaker 1: string theory, and he says it emerged from a research
Speaker 1: program that had success in making other predictions that were
Speaker 1: empirically verified, you know, not from It didn't come from demonology.
Speaker 1: It came from chemistry and physics. So that's interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to get into some serious criticisms of
Speaker 1: this way of thinking, but this does kind of broaden
Speaker 1: the picture and suggest that maybe our way of thinking
Speaker 1: about what's a good scientific idea should be more complicated
Speaker 1: than just saying like, well, it's something where you can
Speaker 1: do a physical test with an observable result, and you
Speaker 1: can say what would falsify it? And you show that
Speaker 1: that's not the case. Yeah, it, you know, and I
Speaker 1: can't help but think of examples such as geocentricism, uh, hedio,
Speaker 1: centrist is um. You know, in terms of all of this,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly false theories that we eventually realized, oh, well,
Speaker 1: the Earth isn't the center of the universe. The Sun
Speaker 1: is at the center of the universe. And yet all
Speaker 1: those theories were still they were still useful models thinking
Speaker 1: about the structure of the Solar system before we really
Speaker 1: had a more nuanced understanding of what it was. But
Speaker 1: with something like string theory, it's such a complex and
Speaker 1: robust uh creation. You know, it was such a robust
Speaker 1: theory that it seems like there's there's much more on
Speaker 1: the line, and there's much more room to potentially create
Speaker 1: something that is not so Yeah. Well, and with string
Speaker 1: theory also, should we treat string theory differently than other
Speaker 1: theories because it's supposedly a final theory? You know, if
Speaker 1: it's the ultimate theory of matter in the universe, should
Speaker 1: there be different rules for assessing it than there would
Speaker 1: be for assessing you know, some theory of genes selection
Speaker 1: or some other you know, some theory in in biology
Speaker 1: or regular chemistry or something. Because it doesn't set itself
Speaker 1: up to evolve, and of course hindsight, but you look
Speaker 1: back at heliocentricism and you can see its place in
Speaker 1: an evolution of thought. But but certainly when people are
Speaker 1: arguing strength theory, they're not saying, well, this is strength
Speaker 1: theory and hopefully we'll work up to wool theory and
Speaker 1: nylon theory, you know, or whatever. Like you said, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's argued as a as a as a
Speaker 1: as a fix to the end of the line. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's a very good point you make about heliocentrism,
Speaker 1: because it's like, um, it was less wrong. That was
Speaker 1: the important thing was that it was less wrong than geocentrism,
Speaker 1: and though it was still wrong, and it still allowed
Speaker 1: you to have a pretty accurate understanding of the of
Speaker 1: immediate solar mechanics. Yeah, so to me, there does seem
Speaker 1: to be something interesting going on in what David is saying,
Speaker 1: Like it's not, um, it's not just a bunch of junk.
Speaker 1: Then again, there might be limits to how far you
Speaker 1: can extend these ideas he's propounding in in how you're
Speaker 1: going to define science. It almost makes it seem like
Speaker 1: it would have to be a case by case scenario. Uh,
Speaker 1: you'd have to take him on a case by case basis,
Speaker 1: and that that means there's no absolute rule. It thinks
Speaker 1: there's just some guidelines and then we have to weigh
Speaker 1: in on it. Yeah, so I want to read some
Speaker 1: some criticisms. One of them is the theoretical physicist Sabine Hassenfelder.
Speaker 1: She responded to this interview that I mentioned, and first
Speaker 1: of all, she says, flatly, post empirical science is an oxymoron,
Speaker 1: just flat out there is no such thing. Now, David
Speaker 1: actually defends himself by saying that he doesn't advocate quote
Speaker 1: post empirical science, just post empirical theory assessment, which is honest,
Speaker 1: I have to admit as a distinction which I have
Speaker 1: failed to grasp thenificance of. But well it's maybe there's
Speaker 1: something there. But anyway, Hassenfelder, her response to this, had
Speaker 1: a really good quote that I wanted to read that
Speaker 1: I thought sums up the attitude of the critics of
Speaker 1: post empiricism pretty well. She said, quote this non empirical
Speaker 1: theory assessment, while important, can however only be means to
Speaker 1: the end of an eventual empirical assessment without making contact
Speaker 1: to observation. A theory isn't useful to describe the natural world,
Speaker 1: not part of the natural sciences, and not physics. These
Speaker 1: insights that Davitt speaks of are thus not assessments that
Speaker 1: can ever validate an idea as being good to describe nature,
Speaker 1: and a theory based on non empirical assessment does not
Speaker 1: belong in the natural sciences. So I think she's acknowledging
Speaker 1: that maybe there is something to non empirical theory assessment,
Speaker 1: only in the sense that it might help bridge us
Speaker 1: along until we can get to a time when there
Speaker 1: is empirical confirmation. Maybe if we can eventually come up
Speaker 1: with ways of testing the predictions of string theory. But
Speaker 1: until but if we don't ever get there, then this
Speaker 1: assessment is type of assessment is useless, right And then,
Speaker 1: of course, how do you get to the point where
Speaker 1: you can test it if you're not working towards that point,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, just say, oh, accidentally, we're now
Speaker 1: in a position to test out this theory that we
Speaker 1: refused to give credence earlier. Now, another voice on this
Speaker 1: matter that we came across is a cal Tech physicist
Speaker 1: Sean Carroll, who wrote on edge dot org answering the
Speaker 1: question what scientific idea is ready for retirement? His answer falsifiability. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, he he sticks by empiricism, but once a
Speaker 1: different empirical paradigm, not post empiricism, but post falsifiability. Simply put,
Speaker 1: and this is a quote from from his paper, refusing
Speaker 1: to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some
Speaker 1: a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial
Speaker 1: role in how the world works, is as non scientific
Speaker 1: as it gets. Yeah, and I think Carol makes a
Speaker 1: good point. They're like, so there may in fact be
Speaker 1: strings at the bottom of reality, you know, matter, the
Speaker 1: universe may be based on strings and and membranes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there may in fact be a multiverse. There may
Speaker 1: be other universes out there and stuff like that. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense for us to say, well, we can't
Speaker 1: entertain that possibility because it doesn't fit with our model
Speaker 1: of the solution to the demarcation problem. You know, He's saying,
Speaker 1: we should have we should be coming up with ways
Speaker 1: to assess these things, even if it doesn't classically fit
Speaker 1: the philosophy of science, definition of science. And of course, Carol,
Speaker 1: he posits a couple of different criteria, so he he
Speaker 1: still wants to stick with empiricism, but he proposes I
Speaker 1: think that that it must be what definite and empirical
Speaker 1: rather than falsifiable. Uh So, that it has to be
Speaker 1: a theory that is scientific in nature, has to be
Speaker 1: well defined, it's described in a clear, unambiguous way, and
Speaker 1: it also has to interact with empirical data in some way,
Speaker 1: like it has to take into account what we know
Speaker 1: empirically about the universe, which, of course, like string theory
Speaker 1: and the multiverse do, they explain what we already know.
Speaker 1: The problem is they don't make predictions about what we
Speaker 1: could know in the future that can be tested. Right,
Speaker 1: So you couldn't You couldn't use it as a way
Speaker 1: to prop up your own hollow earth theories. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: So what else do we have here in terms of criticism, agreement, etcetera.
Speaker 1: In the string wars. Well, I've came across a Nature
Speaker 1: comment piece from December by the mathematician George Ellis in
Speaker 1: the physic theist Joe Silk called scientific method defend the
Speaker 1: integrity of physics, and they were taking a stand against
Speaker 1: post empiricism, or against at least some uses of it.
Speaker 1: Uh So that they start off by saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: some scientists now argue that if a theory is quote
Speaker 1: sufficiently elegant and explanatory. It doesn't have to be tested experimentally.
Speaker 1: And some examples they give our string theory, the kaleidoscopic multiverse,
Speaker 1: the many worlds interpretation of quantum reality. That's one. You know,
Speaker 1: so you've got the the equations of quantum physics. We
Speaker 1: those are very well tested, we know they're accurate. But
Speaker 1: what do they mean when you have the you know,
Speaker 1: the supposed collapse of the way of function or whatever,
Speaker 1: what do they mean really happens in reality when a
Speaker 1: probabilistic wave function event happens. Well, one way of interpreting
Speaker 1: it is saying, okay, every time there's a quantum event
Speaker 1: that could go one way or another, reality actually splits
Speaker 1: into different reality and you have different worlds where both
Speaker 1: are true. Now in the multiverse, right, yeah, different type
Speaker 1: of multiverse, the many worlds quantum reality multiverse. Another one
Speaker 1: would be pre Big Bang concepts. They say, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to do math about what happened before the Big Bang,
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense, Like what happened before the
Speaker 1: initial singularity of all existence? Like was it in a
Speaker 1: giant's pocket? Some marbles on the back of a turtle exactly. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so they say, if you if you d couple
Speaker 1: science from experimental false falsification, quote, theoretical physics risks becoming
Speaker 1: a no man's land between mathematics, physics, and philosophy, that
Speaker 1: does not truly meet the requirements of any I love
Speaker 1: that quote. That's a great quote from from the article. Yeah,
Speaker 1: does it become this own purely? You know? Did it
Speaker 1: become just an abstraction? Right? Has it left the realm
Speaker 1: of the natural sciences without yet just because coming a
Speaker 1: philosophical discussion or or abstract mathematics in in truth, so
Speaker 1: they make a couple of specific examples about string theory
Speaker 1: where they disagree with with Davitt's arguments. Um. But then
Speaker 1: they also go on to say, you know, look, history
Speaker 1: is full of examples of elegant and compelling theories ideas
Speaker 1: that lead scientists in the wrong direction. They cite Ptolemy's
Speaker 1: geocentric universe, Lord Kelvin's vortex theory of the atom, Hoyle's
Speaker 1: steady state universe, you know, the the eternal unchanging universe.
Speaker 1: And in the end they say, quote, in our view,
Speaker 1: the issue boils down to clarifying one question. What potential
Speaker 1: observational or experimental evidence is there that would persuade you
Speaker 1: that the theory is wrong and lead you to abandon it.
Speaker 1: If there is none, it is not a scientific theory.
Speaker 1: So here they're staking out basically with falsification. They're saying
Speaker 1: it's got to be falsifiable in in a testable physical
Speaker 1: a or it is just not science. This is not
Speaker 1: meeting the definition. And they also mentioned some practical considerations
Speaker 1: that that are worth considering. One of them is that
Speaker 1: they say, you know, even if there's some merit to
Speaker 1: post empirical theory assessment in niche subject areas where we
Speaker 1: can't perform experiments like string theory and stuff, public discussion
Speaker 1: of this could have disastrous consequences. It could cause confusion
Speaker 1: and undermine public confidence in uh in science generally, and
Speaker 1: especially in politically charged scientific ideas like climate change, evolution, vaccines,
Speaker 1: GMO safety, all of which are empirically based. But if
Speaker 1: you start introducing this idea but what waits some science
Speaker 1: isn't based on empirical testing, You're going to hurt people's
Speaker 1: confidence in the science. That is, yeah, it ceases to
Speaker 1: become this this pure engine of learning and knowledge and
Speaker 1: truth and becomes this more abstract thing where people, if
Speaker 1: you're always asking, well is driving it? Yeah, people are
Speaker 1: asking this, Wait a minute, so what is just people
Speaker 1: doing weird intellectual experiments in their ivory towers that can't
Speaker 1: be confirmed or denied by by experiments. Um. And then
Speaker 1: so they go on to say also that claiming the
Speaker 1: theory is too good for testing opens the door to
Speaker 1: two genuine pseudoscientists to would claim the same thing about
Speaker 1: their ideas. My my psychic powers are are just too
Speaker 1: elegant and too well explanatory, you know, they explain the
Speaker 1: facts too perfectly to be suggested subjected to this you know,
Speaker 1: prediction problem. Yeah, this is kind of the scenario you
Speaker 1: get into the hand of god argument or conversation, the
Speaker 1: one might have with with someone where you can you
Speaker 1: throughout the criticisms you point out to where it wouldn't work,
Speaker 1: But then they can always they can always change the
Speaker 1: argument until it's it's there's no way to possibly refute it. Right,
Speaker 1: And so they end by saying the imperimeter of science
Speaker 1: should be awarded only to a theory that is testable.
Speaker 1: Only then can we defend science from attack. And to me,
Speaker 1: these seem like concerns that are a very important part
Speaker 1: of the conversation about science communication. It's almost more about
Speaker 1: what you and I do, Robert, But they don't seem
Speaker 1: especially relevant to me, at least to the internal conversation
Speaker 1: between scientists about what kind of work in physics is
Speaker 1: worth doing and how much confidence we should have in
Speaker 1: ideas like string theory. I don't know what you think
Speaker 1: about that, but it seems to me like that that's
Speaker 1: kind of irrelevant. That's more just a public policy conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would, I would agree, though. I mean, when it
Speaker 1: comes to reading about physics, I have to admit I
Speaker 1: would probably choose to read about theoretical physics before I
Speaker 1: would read anymore about experimental experimental things. Yeah. Um, And
Speaker 1: of course we should point out that not all theoretical
Speaker 1: physics is is removed from experiment. I mean, I think,
Speaker 1: I think most theoretical physics, you know, they're interacting with
Speaker 1: particle colliders and and and all the experiments that were
Speaker 1: out there doing gathering data on But yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you're supposed to do in these
Speaker 1: cases where where it's not just that string theorists decided
Speaker 1: that they didn't want to test their their theories. You know,
Speaker 1: that they are by necessity dealing with a part of
Speaker 1: reality that we can't access experimentally. That that's just how
Speaker 1: it is. They didn't design it that way, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean, Like, they didn't pick it. It's just
Speaker 1: a problem with our powers. And another thing I think
Speaker 1: I would acknowledge is that it seems like almost all
Speaker 1: of these people who are critics of the the idea
Speaker 1: of post empirical theory assessment, you know, using these criteria
Speaker 1: other than physical testing, acknowledge that there's something to it.
Speaker 1: They seem to say, okay, yeah, they would probably admit
Speaker 1: that string theory has more going for it than the
Speaker 1: acid gremlin's hypothesis. There, so there is something to the
Speaker 1: non empirical uh theory assessment. They just don't seem to
Speaker 1: say that it's enough to call it science. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I can't help me. Be reminded in all this of
Speaker 1: nineteenth century German philosopher Frederick of Wilhelm Joseph Schilling's Natural
Speaker 1: Philosophy Um Philosophy of Nature in German Um. And this
Speaker 1: is a concept um he developed as a sort of
Speaker 1: augmentation to science that would allow science to investigate the
Speaker 1: human spirit, because he saw nature or the force nature
Speaker 1: and the human spirit or the forced geist as the
Speaker 1: two great opposing forces in cosmos, with the human mind
Speaker 1: at the center of everything. So nature, according to two Shilling,
Speaker 1: is the visible spirit of the invisible spirit of the mind.
Speaker 1: But again the mind is very much at the center
Speaker 1: of the equation um. Now he was this This concept
Speaker 1: was attacked for, among other things, lack of empirical orientation,
Speaker 1: And indeed a lot of it seems to inge on
Speaker 1: the investigation of the invisible, the comprehension of the scientific
Speaker 1: getting unverifiable through the lens of something at least linked
Speaker 1: to the substance of science. So it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: I think I thought of that a lot when I
Speaker 1: was reading over some of the material, because it seems
Speaker 1: like a good example of sort of bad post empirical science. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the idea that you're gonna you're gonna, you're gonna take,
Speaker 1: you're gonna go as far as science will take, and
Speaker 1: then you're just gonna completely extrapolate it into the unseen um.
Speaker 1: But then the counter argument is, then, how is that different?
Speaker 1: How is that ultimately different from something like string theory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we're back to the demarcation problem, right, Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: what is the rule we're using to tell the difference?
Speaker 1: I sense a difference to a sense that there's something
Speaker 1: much more respectable about string theory and multiverse cosmology than
Speaker 1: there is about the the invisible spirit um. But it's
Speaker 1: hard to articulate exactly what that is though, though I
Speaker 1: would say that Davitt's criteria are somewhat useful in that
Speaker 1: regard that they give you some criteria for saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not running a test, but here are some characteristics
Speaker 1: of these theories that do seem to make them probabilistically
Speaker 1: and historically more likely to be correct than just gremlins
Speaker 1: or invisible spirits. You know, it reminds me of something else,
Speaker 1: and that is the the Ian and Banks Culture books,
Speaker 1: which I know would bring up a lot but but
Speaker 1: but he managed to fit a lot of science into these,
Speaker 1: at least in the earlier books. It's established that in
Speaker 1: this uh, in this culture known as the culture, you
Speaker 1: have all these ai minds that are really ruling everything,
Speaker 1: that rule these giant warships, and they make all the
Speaker 1: decisions and they they do all the heavy thinking and
Speaker 1: heavy lifting for the humans and humanoids that make up
Speaker 1: the culture, but they keep the human humans around and
Speaker 1: they occasionally have the humans you know, engaging and very
Speaker 1: important roles. And part of this uh it's it's it's
Speaker 1: uh proposed is because the humans will occasionally make leaps
Speaker 1: in judgment or in theory that the machines do not cannot,
Speaker 1: which comes back to that that idea that I put
Speaker 1: forth earlier about how if you had a pure computer,
Speaker 1: a pure, pure logical entity doing the science, Um, would
Speaker 1: there be limitations to that? Would would there be this
Speaker 1: place where you would need a non empirical jumping logic
Speaker 1: that only a human who is abound and shackled to
Speaker 1: their prior beliefs and their philosophies, that only they could
Speaker 1: make what a what a skeptical engine? You know, a
Speaker 1: computer of scientific investigation not be able to make intuitive speculations.
Speaker 1: You would have to have the the the the Devil's
Speaker 1: advocate computer. Right, Yeah, throw weird ideas out there and
Speaker 1: then allow for testing. Soh this this veil of testing. Indeed,
Speaker 1: so one more thing I wanted to mention before the
Speaker 1: end of this. I was actually inspired to do this
Speaker 1: episode by reading a really good article on this whole
Speaker 1: subject of, you know, post empiricism and falsifiability in science
Speaker 1: by the philosopher of science Massimo Peleucci that he wrote
Speaker 1: in Eon magazine, which is always one of our favorites
Speaker 1: around And they're nonprofit now, so if you really like
Speaker 1: what they're doing over there, you can donate to the cause.
Speaker 1: By the way. Yeah, but uh so, Peleucci mates makes
Speaker 1: a point in his approach to this topic. He wonders
Speaker 1: if what if science is not it can't be demarcated
Speaker 1: in a way that a word like triangle can. So
Speaker 1: there's a word triangle that has a very clear definition,
Speaker 1: has what he would call quote necessary and jointly sufficient properties,
Speaker 1: and that just means it has a description which includes
Speaker 1: everything that could possibly be a triangle and rules out
Speaker 1: everything that is not a triangle. It has three angles
Speaker 1: that add up to eight degrees um perfect description of
Speaker 1: all triangles and nothing else. What if science is simply
Speaker 1: not like that? There aren't statements that are a perfect
Speaker 1: description of science and nothing else, and rather science is
Speaker 1: more a concept that is based on what Wittgenstein would
Speaker 1: call family resemblances in that it's a term like game. Now,
Speaker 1: could you come up with a definition or a description
Speaker 1: of what games are that includes everything that's a game
Speaker 1: and excludes everything that's not a game. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: actually something that comes up a lot when I play games,
Speaker 1: such as my argument that apples what apples to apples?
Speaker 1: Apples to apples? Yeah, not a game? Um as fun
Speaker 1: as the other one is? What is it? The one
Speaker 1: with all the awful cards and it cards against Humanity?
Speaker 1: Also very fun, but not a game according to you?
Speaker 1: According to mean, some people would say it's a game.
Speaker 1: Is chopping would a game? You know? When I was
Speaker 1: a kid, I really love chopping woods. Some people think
Speaker 1: that as a chore, but I don't know. I guess
Speaker 1: it was just fun to swing an axe. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: certainly that's the thing. You can turn non games into
Speaker 1: games by establishing a set of rules for your completion
Speaker 1: of that task. Yeah. Yeah, you can turn things that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a game at all into a game. But
Speaker 1: you could get a room full of people to have
Speaker 1: a list of activities like chopping wood, apples to apples,
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of things like that, and say, is
Speaker 1: this a game or is it not? And mostly I
Speaker 1: think they'd agree, you know, you'd get general agreement on
Speaker 1: the on the use of this term as it applies
Speaker 1: to things. And yet we can't come up with this
Speaker 1: necessary and jointly sufficient description of what games are. Maybe
Speaker 1: science is like that. So in a sense, science is
Speaker 1: a thing that would not be able to see itself.
Speaker 1: It would not be able to set itself because it
Speaker 1: itself does not fall into the uh specificity of form
Speaker 1: that science requires. Yeah, that could be. I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: I I find this topic very interesting because I don't
Speaker 1: quite know what the answer is. I'm not sure how
Speaker 1: I feel about it. Obviously, I'm not a physicist, so
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not working in these fields like multiverse
Speaker 1: cosmology and string theory, so I'm not even educated enough
Speaker 1: in them to really judge the intrinsic merits of the ideas,
Speaker 1: but just accepting that they are very good theoretical solutions. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is the that this is the appropriate
Speaker 1: feeling to have about it, because we're talking about theories
Speaker 1: that take us to the edge of human understanding and
Speaker 1: extrapolate beyond, and that's that is a place where I
Speaker 1: think where we can all agree it's okay to feel inadequate,
Speaker 1: It's okay to feel befuddled and unsure, because that is
Speaker 1: the nature of the edge. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess in the end, like I, I sort of see
Speaker 1: what Dovid is saying and like his his distinctions do
Speaker 1: make sense to me. I also see what the critics
Speaker 1: are saying about that not quite being science, or at
Speaker 1: least not science in the same way that all the
Speaker 1: science we really care about is uh. I wonder how
Speaker 1: that should work out in terms of practical concerns like funding,
Speaker 1: Like should we be funding uh, using public money to
Speaker 1: fund string theory research in the same way that we're
Speaker 1: funding stuff that is being tested and falsified. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean it seems to me you often encounter problems when
Speaker 1: you start opening up the discussion to the merits of
Speaker 1: this particular scientific inquiry versus all the others. You know,
Speaker 1: you kind of get into that hole, why are you
Speaker 1: doing this when we haven't cured cancer? And then you
Speaker 1: your answers like, well, this is this is theoretical physicist physics. Here,
Speaker 1: we weren't going to actually achieve a cure for cancer,
Speaker 1: as that's not our area of expertise. Yeah, like the
Speaker 1: the sort of false assumption of a zero sum game
Speaker 1: in the investigation of science. This is something that comes
Speaker 1: up a lot, you know, as somebody does a study
Speaker 1: that has an interesting but not necessarily technological results, and
Speaker 1: people comment under the article why are they studying this
Speaker 1: when they could be curing cancer? Right, as though, what
Speaker 1: the shrimp on a treadmill scenario where it's just become
Speaker 1: at all, I can't believe it. Our tax dollars are
Speaker 1: paying for shrimps on a treadmill. And then you ignore
Speaker 1: the fact that well it's it's it's still advancing science.
Speaker 1: If it's a you know, it's a valid study, it's
Speaker 1: just maybe not as as sexy or as a uh
Speaker 1: you knows, as obvious an advancement. And you don't even
Speaker 1: know in the future in what ways it may inform
Speaker 1: future technologies and other applications. I mean, that's always the
Speaker 1: thing with science. We we don't always know what the
Speaker 1: outcomes are going to be of learning something. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: this thing called science continues to creep out, sometimes into
Speaker 1: snail's pace, uh, sometimes a bit faster into the unknown.
Speaker 1: All Right, So how about you, how do you feel
Speaker 1: about this particular topic. And do you think the so
Speaker 1: called string wars that we're talking about here, do these,
Speaker 1: as some critics charge, distract from the real bad that
Speaker 1: should be going on against pseudoscience and the misuse of
Speaker 1: science by various outlets. Is this kind of the uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the wars of the of the Seven Kingdoms
Speaker 1: that are occurring while the White Walkers of pseudoscience marched
Speaker 1: down from the north. That that is true? Also, I mean,
Speaker 1: are are we sitting here arguing about what physicists should
Speaker 1: or shouldn't be contemplating? Meanwhile, we've got alternative medicine peddlers
Speaker 1: who are at the gates who knows. Uh. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from all you guys and gals about that.
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