I am always impressed by the number of motte and bailey commentors here. The WSJ cravenly lets the most hated corporations write featured Op-eds and that's normal? Ho-hum? Business as usual!?
We need to seriously reconsider what we want out of journalism. I don't want to live anywhere where this sort of media is okay. I'm not sure why anyone else is suddenly okay with this either. The "Free Market" was supposed to be a tool to more efficiently organize labor and capital, not enslave us. It is supposed to work for us, it is our tool. But if readers are now _okay_ with literal shilling in media, then that's it. We've been captured by our own tools, slaves to our own machines.
I keep questioning my decision to have a Washington Post subscription, but I'll sleep better tonight knowing it goes towards something that at least _tries_ to be journalism.
> I keep questioning my decision to have a Washington Post subscription, but I'll sleep better tonight knowing it goes towards something that at least _tries_ to be journalism.
I think you need to seriously consider whether "tries to be journalism" means "is more in line with my opinions."
Furthermore, this was an op-ed piece. Agree with it or not, it isn't, in fact it is expicitly not, objective journalism.
This is exactly the motte and bailey argument that gets under my skin. The motte is "all media/opinions are biased", which is trivially true and easily defended, and the bailey is "this op-ed is acceptable", harder to argue, unless one uses the motte to advance it.
Did you just learn what “motte and bailey” means or something?
He’s saying look at the section the piece appeared in (op-ed; opposite the editorial page; the OPINION section)
It’s the one part of the paper that is specifically meant for opinions. It has featured climate change deniers, flat earthers, and 9/11 truthers. Because it’s expected that people know what an opinion piece is and can use their own experience and wisdom to form their own opinion.
Second, it’s easy/fun to crap on Comcast, but it’s possible to be pro-net-neutrality AND pro-repeal. See: Marc Andreessen.
I'm not defending this person or the complete absurdity of his statements but an Op-Ed can be written by anyone, the only stipulation being that the not be affiliated with the newspapers editorial board and ethics dictate there should be a disclaimer if needed. The disclaimer here was certainly disingenuous at best though.
A more disturbing trend is that these same Ed-Op pieces are then referenced and used by shills and politicians as "proof" that this is something that the average citizen wants. See the following:
The issue at hand is not that this view was published, but that the current and highly relevant affiliation of the author was obscured in the disclaimer:
> Mr. Leibowitz was a Democratic commissioner at the FTC from 2004-13 and chairman beginning in 2009. As a partner at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, he represents both technology companies and broadband providers.
quoth TFA:
> However, we do know Leibowitz’s primary broadband client: Comcast, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the net neutrality repeal.
Furthermore that obscurant disclaimer is at the end of the op-ed rather than the introduction.
Op-eds are generally understood to be opinions, often from stakeholders ina news/policy situation. The problem here is that the author's bio was apparently this:
> Mr. Leibowitz was a Democratic commissioner at the FTC from 2004-13 and chairman beginning in 2009. As a partner at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, he represents both technology companies and broadband providers.
The Intercept's assertion appears to be that Leibovitz's affiliation with recent Comcast deals should be more prominently noted.
I believe that opinions that some view as harmful should be given more light than they're currently receiving, however withholding this kind of information is actively harmful and WSJ should face repercussions. I'm doubtful they will.
Professional person that agrees with you - expert.
Professional person that disagrees with you - shill.
I’m conflicted on this. I do not think the Obama era measures are the be all and end all of net neutrality legislation, but Trump’s blatant pro big business and anticompetitive instincts are always a threat to consumer interests. Whichever way we as individuals decide or lean, it’s always worth listening to both sides of the argument.
I agree with you. The debate is a lot more nuanced, but you would never know that listening to the hyperbole from both sides. Someone can be completely for net neutrality, but against classifying ISPs as common carriers as the solution. The problem with using the FCC classification is that we can a) get flip flops like what just happened and b) it opens up ISPs to unknown potential regulation that in theory could slow down innovation (will the government start regulating pricing?).
I support net neutrality, but would prefer a better long term solution than the FCC classification. Unfortunately, there is still no better law in place, but with the current energy level people should be calling their congress people to get something done.
Suppose an attorney for the Electronic Frontier foundation posts an article or opinion piece on a digital rights legal issue. This has happened many times and I don’t remember ever seeing anyone call them a shill, yet they are a professional person paid to argue on these issues in public and in court. How is that different from advertising? How about legal experts on human rights? Environmental activism? Is anyone working for Greenpace as a lawyer or scientific adviser an environmentalist shill? If not, then how can we use that slur against people working for energy companies?
I’m not some corporatist shill making this argument. I’m just making a liberal plea for tolerance and respect in public discourse.
Legal experts on many different sides of many different debates have a reasonable expectation to have their opinions and arguments heard in public without harassment, abuse and intimidation. However there is a reasonable expectation of disclosure of such interests.
The argument in this specific case seems to be n the amount of detail in the disclosure, but the fact is he was a Democrat appointee and he works for a law firm that represents Comcast. There was an attempt at some level of disclosure and he wasn’t actually acting as an attorney for Comcast. I don’t think this is as big a deal as is being made about it.
It seems like your statement was also a motte and bailey. With a softball statement that bad journalism is bad (non-controversial), you'd have us believe our whole economic system is also bad (highly controversial).
I agree that the described debating tactic exists (thank you for sharing the explanation), what I find most interesting is the bailey example given isn't that controversial ("cultural knowledge is just as valid as scientific knowledge"). I suppose it depends on the context in which it was used, but I can think of plenty of examples where such a statement would be banal.
The question is not whether there is just as valid cultural knowledge, but whether culture as a source of knowledge is just as valid as science, which it is not. If cultural knowledge happens to align with sciencific knowledge, then it is valid as well, but what establishes validity is science/the scientific method, not culture.
> "The question is not whether there is just as valid cultural knowledge, but whether culture as a source of knowledge is just as valid as science, which it is not."
Science only truly works in when the properties being explored can be accurately quantified. There are plenty of experiences and occurrences which cannot be accurately quantified. There is a common misconception amongst scientifically-minded people that science can explain everything just because it can explain a wide range of events, from the big bang to the splitting of an atom. The truth is there are certain parts of our experience that make no sense to put a number on, and science will never excel in those spheres.
> Science only truly works in when the properties being explored can be accurately quantified.
What about the scientific method makes it so that this supposedly is the case?
> There are plenty of experiences and occurrences which cannot be accurately quantified.
Mind giving an example (for which you also think the scientific method is not applicable)?
> There is a common misconception amongst scientifically-minded people that science can explain everything just because it can explain a wide range of events
I doubt that that is a very wide-spread misconception among scientifically minded people, for the simple reason that a very central aspect of science is to say "I don't know" if ... well, if you don't know. That directly contradicts the supposed belief that "science can explain everything", as saying "I don't know" implies "I don't think science can explain this, at least not yet". If anything, it seems to me like that is a wide-spread misconception among not so scientifically minded people about what scientifically minded people think.
However, the mere fact that science can not explain something does not mean that anything else can, and so far nothing has been demonstrated that could explain anything that science can't.
> The truth is there are certain parts of our experience that make no sense to put a number on, and science will never excel in those spheres.
What does putting numbers on things have to do with any of this?
> "What does putting numbers on things have to do with any of this?"
Before we explore the rest of your questions, we need to establish the fundamentals.
Science is built upon testability. If something can't be tested, we can't extend our scientific understanding of it. The scientific method works by first establishing a hypothesis to test, and then conducting experiments to assess whether the hypothesis was accurate. If you can't verify if the hypothesis is accurate or not then the scientific method doesn't work. You can only verify if something is accurate or not if you can accurately measure it. Measuring something relies on being able to quantify it. Do you disagree with any of the above?
> "I don't think science can explain this, at least not yet"
It's the "at least not yet" that I'm referring to as the misconception. Some things do not lend themselves to measurement, so in some cases it's much more honest to admit we'll probably never be able to accurately measure some things.
To give a simple example, let's say I ask you...
"On a scale of 1 to 10, how unhappy do you feel today?"
Let's also imagine I ask multiple people the same question. What can I infer from this data set? Am I measuring the perception of sadness? What role does the strength of memory play on this? Would I have got a different answer if I asked you 5 minutes later? Is a 7/10 from one person comparable to a 7/10 from another person?
Note that even though the data set is nonsense, the decision on which number between 1 to 10 was based on something (or rather a group of different things), it's just not something that can be boiled down to an accurate model. Any attempt to do so will require such high levels of abstraction that the end result is too far divorced from reality.
To give a more famous example, Douglas Adams' meaning of life being 42, even if you understood the variables used to arrive at this number, what relation does that number have to reality?
In summary, science attempts to describe the order in the chaos, but there are certain aspects of life that do not lend themselves to being reduced in this way. If you accept that, then you can accept that even if science has merit in some fields, it also has its limitations.
> Science is built upon testability. If something can't be tested, we can't extend our scientific understanding of it.
Yes.
> If you can't verify if the hypothesis is accurate or not then the scientific method doesn't work.
No. Science never verifies, science only falsifies. If something were to be verified successfully, that would mean that falsification would be impossible. If something is not falsifiable, it is not testable, and therefore not science, therefore science does not verify.
> You can only verify if something is accurate or not if you can accurately measure it.
What does "accurate(ly)" mean here?
> Measuring something relies on being able to quantify it.
No, unless you mean that in the very abstract sense that any information can be encoded as numbers.
> It's the "at least not yet" that I'm referring to as the misconception. Some things do not lend themselves to measurement, so in some cases it's much more honest to admit we'll probably never be able to accurately measure something.
I'll take the "to accurately measure something" to mean "to explain something scientifically", as I don't understand what you mean by "accurately measure something", see above.
"at least not yet" means "it's not possible now, possibly it will never be possible, possibly it will be possible at some point", right? So, where does that contradict the "admission" that "we'll probably never be able" to make that a misconception? Aren't you saying essentially the same thing with different words?
> Let's also imagine I ask multiple people the same question. What can I infer from this data set? Am I measuring the perception of sadness?
With noise, as all measurements are, but yes, what else would you be measuring?
> What role does the strength of memory play on this? Would I have got a different answer if I asked you 5 minutes later?
All perfectly fine scientific question that one could investigate, no?
> Is a 7/10 from one person comparable to a 7/10 from another person?
Maybe, maybe not, how is the precision of a measurement relevant to the question of whether it is a measurement?
> Note that even though the data set is nonsense, the decision on which number between 1 to 10 was based on something (or rather a group of different things), it's just not something that can be boiled down to a model. Any attempt to do so will require such high levels of abstraction that the end result is too far divorced from reality.
Are you saying that you think the answers you would get would be completely random with no connection to people's actual emotional state? Do you think that if you asked this question to a population of people whose loved ones were murdered the night before you ask them, they would be just as likely to answer 1 as they would be to answer 10 or any number in between, and the distribution of answers would be indistinguishable from when you asked a population of people who just found new love and won a million bucks in the lottery?
Or in other words: Are you saying that you think the model/concept that we commonly refer to using the label "happiness" in the English language does not map to anything in reality?
> To give a more famous example, Douglas Adams' meaning of life being 42, even if you understood the variables used to arrive at this number, what relation does that number have to reality?
Erm ... the relation described by the method that is used to arrive at this number? Is that a trick question?
> In summary, science attempts to describe the order in the chaos, but there are certain aspects of life that do not lend themselves to being reduced in this way.
Such as? Can you justify that position in any way? So far, this seems to be a completely unsupported assertion on your part.
> If you accept that, then you can accept that even if science has merit in some fields, it also has its limitations.
Which is precisely what I said: It is a very important part of science to say "I don't know", that is exactly the recognition that scientific knowledge has limits.
> "No. Science never verifies, science only falsifies. If something were to be verified successfully, that would mean that falsification would be impossible. If something is not falsifiable, it is not testable, and therefore not science, therefore science does not verify."
It's the hypothesis that determines whether we're looking for the presence or absence of something, or in other words what the implications of a positive or negative result are. Perhaps you need to understand the roles that models play in science to see it. For example, when the standard model of physics predicted the Higgs boson, the purpose of searching for the Higgs boson was neither to verify or falsify the standard model, but rather to see whether it existed. The outcome either way was helpful in extending scientific knowledge. As it turns out, the Higgs boson was discovered, which is an example of science confirming something, which therefore negates "science only falsifies".
> "No, unless you mean that in the very abstract sense that any information can be encoded as numbers."
You're missing out on the fact I'm trying to suggest accurate quantification over simple quantification. You can attach a number to anything, that much is true, but the question is, does that number give you any power to predict outcomes? Or in other words, is it a useful number? I gave the example before of a sadness number. You can attach a number to perceived sadness, but does it tell you anything universal about the nature of sadness, or is it purely subjective? Note that subjective implies that it depends on the person in question and all environmental factors that exist at the time, which a single number would not account for.
> "I'll take the "to accurately measure something" to mean "to explain something scientifically", as I don't understand what you mean by "accurately measure something", see above.
"at least not yet" means "it's not possible now, possibly it will never be possible, possibly it will be possible at some point", right? So, where does that contradict the "admission" that "we'll probably never be able" to make that a misconception? Aren't you saying essentially the same thing with different words?"
See above. To give you this same point in the form of a question, if you have a measurement, but it doesn't give you the power to predict anything, is that measurement scientifically useful?
> "With noise, as all measurements are, but yes, what else would you be measuring?"
> "All perfectly fine scientific question that one could investigate, no?"
The point I was trying to make that clearly wasn't clear enough was, you don't have enough control over the variables, nor do you know what the important variables are, as not only are there a vast range to choose from, but the important variables may vary from person to person. If you have no way of determining whether confirmation/denial of your prediction was based on scientific understanding or chance, what have you really understood about how the world works? As I suggested previously, science is an attempt to create order out of chaos. Some chaos is simple enough for us to accurately model and predict, other chaos is simply too complex, too impenetrable, too hard to test in a controlled manner. If you consider that physics is a vast subject, and that this concerns the simplest of all phenomena in life, how much more complex do you think the science that studies, with the same level of detail, the affect of something even more unruly, such as the way society shapes its inhabitants. Sociology already exists, but the approaches that work in physics do not work in sociology, and the knowledge we do gain is fragmented and dependent on the society of the time. Our body of scientific knowledge in such fields will forever be limited because of that.
> "Maybe, maybe not, how is the precision of a measurement relevant to the question of whether it is a measurement?"
The whole purpose of having measurements in science is to be able to use past knowledge to guide more in-depth questions. If you cannot use a measurement to form future predictions/hypotheses, what value does it have for science?
> "Are you saying that you think the answers you would get would be completely random with no connection to people's actual emotional state? Do you think that if you asked this question to a population of people whose loved ones were murdered the night before you ask them, they would be just as likely to answer 1 as they would be to answer 10 or any number in between, and the distribution of answers would be indistinguishable from when you asked a population of people who just found new love and won a million bucks in the lottery?
Or in other words: Are you saying that you think the model/concept that we commonly refer to using the label "happiness" in the English language does not map to anything in reality?"
The short answer is; any factor not in your control could skew the results, and in this case there are too many factors outside your control. Perception of happiness is just one example of a factor outside your control. As a side note, individuals react to trauma in different ways, and some of those ways are informed by social conditioning.
> "Erm ... the relation described by the method that is used to arrive at this number? Is that a trick question?"
See points above about the purpose of measurement / scientific models.
> "Such as? Can you justify that position in any way? So far, this seems to be a completely unsupported assertion on your part."
I gave you an example of quantifying sadness.
> "Which is precisely what I said: It is a very important part of science to say "I don't know", that is exactly the recognition that scientific knowledge has limits."
Not the same. "I don't know, but I believe we will in the future" is not the same as "I don't know, and I don't believe we ever will know". One statement has faith in the scientific method to conquer all obstacles at its core, the other has skepticism about the ability of the scientific method to overcome all obstacles at its core.
> Not the same. "I don't know, but I believe we will in the future" is not the same as "I don't know, and I don't believe we ever will know". One statement has faith in the scientific method to conquer all obstacles at its core, the other has skepticism about the ability of the scientific method to overcome all obstacles at its core.
I will skip the rest of what you have written for now to first address this fundamental misunderstanding, I might get back to it when we have cleared this up.
I agree that those two statements are not the same. But neither is the standpoint of science generally. "We don't know, at least not yet" does not mean "we don't know but we will know", it means "we don't know and we don't know whether we will ever know", so it is skeptical towards both claims, that we will know, and that we won't know. Not being convinced of some claim does not imply being convinced of the negation of that claim, it is possible, and often rational, to be skeptical of both.
> "I will skip the rest of what you have written for now to first address this fundamental misunderstanding, I might get back to it when we have cleared this up.
I agree that those two statements are not the same. But neither is the standpoint of science generally. "We don't know, at least not yet" does not mean "we don't know but we will know", it means "we don't know and we don't know whether we will ever know", so it is skeptical towards both claims, that we will know, and that we won't know. Not being convinced of some claim does not imply being convinced of the negation of that claim, it is possible, and often rational, to be skeptical of both.
OK?"
The point I'm making which you're overlooking is that those two viewpoints are not equally likely. Just look at it logically. If science needs the accumulation of evidence to build an accurate understanding, but some parts of our world are highly resistant to this process, it is not at all likely that we will break that barrier. Like it or not, "We don't know, at least not yet" implies hope, I'm suggesting there are some parts of our experience that are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry, and the sooner we accept that science (whilst very useful in some fields) has fundamental limits, the easier it'll be to take a more holistic view of what constitutes wisdom.
To be clear, I have no problem with the scientific process whatsoever, I think it has been a fantastic tool in helping humanity advance. The issue I have is with stretching that tool beyond the point of utility, but giving it a pass because it's science.
As I sense our debate will soon be winding down, I'll try to leave this on a more positive note. Here's Alan Watts saying in 2 minutes what I've failed to say in much more time:
> The point I'm making which you're overlooking is that those two viewpoints are not equally likely.
I am not overlooking that at all, which is why I said "generally". There can be reasons to think one direction is more likely than another to make progress--that in itself is actually again a question open to scientific inquiry. But the point is that the "we don't know yet" does not imply one way or the other, but some of your points assumed that it did, which is why I wanted to clear this up first.
> If science needs the accumulation of evidence to build an accurate understanding, but some parts of our world are highly resistant to this process, it is not at all likely that we will break that barrier.
Yeah, sure. But how do we know which parts of our world are highly resistant to scientific inquiry?
> Like it or not, "We don't know, at least not yet" implies hope
I'm not so sure I would go so far as to call it hope, but it obviously leaves open the logical possibility of progress at a later date, yes. The actual hope that people have of ever finding the answer to a given question, though, varies widely depending on the question.
> I'm suggesting there are some parts of our experience that are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry, and the sooner we accept that science (whilst very useful in some fields) has fundamental limits, the easier it'll be to take a more holistic view of what constitutes wisdom.
But how do we distinguish those parts of our experience that are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry from those that we simply didn't have the right idea yet how to approach them?
I don't see any problem with the hypothesis that some parts of our experience might be fundamentally off limits to scientific inquiry. What I don't see is any justification for it actually being true, and in particular I don't see any justification for the hypothesis that a particular part of our experience is hostile to scientific inquiry, which would be required for this knowledge to actually be practically relevant (just knowing that something is off limits doesn't help you anything if you have no clue what it is that you are wasting your time on).
Put yourself in the shoes of an educated person in the 10th century. Suppose you were asked to decide where to draw the line between which parts of our experience are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry and which parts it's reasonable to have hope of progress in understanding in. What do you think, which branches of modern day established scientific knowledge would you have cut off? Remember, not even optical microscopes have been invented yet. Germs as causes of diseases are unknown. A prevailing theory of disease is the theory of humors. And prevailing not among quacks, but among what you might call the medical elite of the time. You can not use anything we now know to make the decision, and that includes a whole lot of stuff that everyone just knows to be true, it's actually pretty hard to even figure out what you would have to discard to be in the position of that 10th century person, stuff that you have learned in elementary school and just consider an obvious fact of life was still fundamentally misunderstood and centuries away from discovery.
Now, mind you that leaving open the logical possibility of answers at a later date does not imply that you assign it a high probability, and it in no way prevents you from prioritizing other things for investigation. By contrast, if you actually mean "there is no answer to this question", then that implies that you stop any further investigation forever. If you have concluded with absolute certainty that an answer is impossible, it would be nonsensical to search for an answer, as you would be doing what you are convinced to be a waste of time.
I think you will agree that any decision to actually stop inquiry forever into certain parts of our experience in the 10th century based on the best knowledge available then could very well have ended with some very important and useful field of knowledge of today being erased from history? So, what makes you confident that you can pull it off now without the same risk for our ancestors 1000 years down the line? What makes you so sure that you are not as myopic about our future as they would have been about things that now seem trivial? We are now starting to fix genetic diseases in living organisms. They were still thinking about those diseases in terms of humors and demons. We can now reliably distinguish and treat thousands of diseases, compared to four hilariously inaccurate categories of humors. There is still much that could be better, but the precision we have now would have been just unimaginable to the medical elite of that time.
So, what is your justification that distinguishes your position from someone a thousand years ago claiming that the human body is just too complex and demons are fundamentally hostile to scientific inquiry (well, the spirit of that statement, the conceptualization of the scientific method was still far in the future, obviously), and therefore we should accept that science has fundamental limits?
> To be clear, I have no problem with the scientific process whatsoever, I think it has been a fantastic tool in helping humanity advance. The issue I have is with stretching that tool beyond the point of utility, but giving it a pass because it's science.
Well, what is that point of utility, and how did you determine that?
> As I sense our debate will soon be winding down
Well, I'm happy to continue this, and even getting back to your previous post, as well as your still open question elsewhere in the thread, I'm just trying to avoid confusion by not continuing discussion on too many ideas simultaneously.
> "Yeah, sure. But how do we know which parts of our world are highly resistant to scientific inquiry?"
Let's focus on this for a bit, as it's clearly at the core of our different viewpoints.
I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but I can say which parts of the universe are hostile to science, and that can be summarised as 'that which we would struggle to measure'.
Using your example of the person from the 10th century, whilst they would have almost certainly not been able to envision all of the things we would eventually come to measure, the principals of measuring the physical world were in place, and we would have known, if not precisely but intuitively, some of the key concepts behind the measurement of physical objects, such as speed, acceleration, inertia, friction, heat, etc... Whilst our understanding of the physical world would've been much cruder than today, at least we had a framework by which we could explore it (at the level of detail available to us before the telescope and microscope were invented).
Contrast this with the study of the metaphysical. What concepts do we have that help us to measure the metaphysical? Perhaps some are around the corner, but at best all we can do at the moment is statistical analysis. To clarify, whilst term 'metaphysics' could be used to describe anything that describes our world without necessarily being part of it. I gave the example before of society, which I still think is the most straightforward one to explore. Depending on your field of view, it's possible to say society doesn't exist. For example, if a person lives a hermit lifestyle, are they still living within society, or does it take interacting with others to be part of a society? I would suggest it's the latter, and sociology as a field of study is one that (amongst other things) looks at how living in a group affects the individual. So what do these groups look like and how does an individual find their role within them? When we seek to understand complex topics, our instinct is to put together a simplified model by which to reason with. In order to simplify, we need to know how best to do so. Where can we start with this? Okay, let's imagine we start by studying group dynamics in smaller groups, such as those found in tribes of people. Let's imagine we discovered some commonly observable traits in such groups. We then seek to take these observations and apply them more broadly. What can we do? We could imagine that the broader society still lives in a series of tribes (the work tribe, the home tribe, etc...), and look for similar dynamics confined within them, and look for the effects of interplay between tribes. Let's say again that we were successful in doing so, and found commonly repeated patterns of behavior amongst different classifications of people. Now let's introduce something disruptive like a new technology that changes the group dynamic. Computers are a good example of this, as they have undoubtedly changed society, socially and economically. The first question to ask is, do the classifications of humans within a society need to change to accurately model the new world? To give a crude example, if an "alpha" in a group is the individual with the highest status within that group, there may have been a time when the alpha male was the physically strongest, but today that position is not as simple to define, as there are some aspects of life within society where that is still the case, and others where it is not. Therefore someone can be an "alpha" in one group whilst not being an alpha in all groups. How does that varying social status change behaviour? I would suggest models need to be updated to accommodate for all this additional variability. As societies constantly change, and these models along with them, what underlying truths are we really getting at here? Is the purpose of sociologists to act as historians, doing our best to capture the zeitgeist before it changes again? I would suggest that whilst such activity is an interesting, and something worthy of study, we aren't really establishing fundamental understanding but instead cataloging change. Almost everything in society is fluid, there's only a small number of constants. Do you see why this constantly changing nature makes it hard to build up scientific understanding that lasts?
> I don't claim to have a crystal ball, but I can say which parts of the universe are hostile to science, and that can be summarised as 'that which we would struggle to measure'.
Are you sure that "struggle" is the right word here? We have struggled a lot to measure PET scans or the higgs boson, to take two random examples, and I suppose you would agree that neither of those are somehow "fundamentally hostile to science"? Somewhat hostile, sure, I guess you could say that, but obviously not sufficiently so to justify the conclusion that gaining knowledge is impossible!?
> Using your example of the person from the 10th century, whilst they would have almost certainly not been able to envision all of the things we would eventually come to measure, the principals of measuring the physical world were in place, and we would have known, if not precisely but intuitively, some of the key concepts behind the measurement of physical objects, such as speed, acceleration, inertia, friction, heat
But would they? I think inertia is a nice example for this: At the time, Aristotle's idea that the natural state of things is at rest and that things only continued moving if power was being applied to them was still prevailing. Inertia really was not a concept yet, not even a poorly understood one, people simply had a completely wrong idea about how things worked, even at this fundamental level.
Also, what about electric fields, say? Would you say they intuitively knew the key concepts behind measuring electric field strength?
> Whilst our understanding of the physical world would've been much cruder than today, at least we had a framework by which we could explore it (at the level of detail available to us before the telescope and microscope were invented).
Well, sure. But a lot of that framework that we have now was also still missing.
> Contrast this with the study of the metaphysical.
How? What is "the metaphysical"? How do you distinguish it from "the physical"?
> What concepts do we have that help us to measure the metaphysical?
Well, I think we first have to establish what the metaphysical even is before I could say how we could measure it.
> Perhaps some are around the corner, but at best all we can do at the moment is statistical analysis.
In other words: Science? What would be an example of scientific inquiry of what you would consider to be part of the physical that does not boil down to statistical analysis? (Mind you that for a useful comparison you have to start from the point of view of someone who doesn't have the scientific models that resulted from the inquiry yet--establishing those models was the result of the inquiry, not the starting point.)
> To clarify, whilst term 'metaphysics' could be used to describe anything that describes our world without necessarily being part of it.
I think something is missing from this sentence?!
> I gave the example before of society, which I still think is the most straightforward one to explore. Depending on your field of view, it's possible to say society doesn't exist.
Really, that is not a matter of view, but a matter of definition. I get the feeling that you are falling victim to essentialism here. Words don't have (intrinsic) meaning, they only have usages. That is to say, a word by itself does not somehow have any inherent semantics, the fact that words can be used to transmit ideas relies on a common mapping from words to concepts (aka "definitions") between communicating parties, not on inherent properties of words.
The word "society" happens to be used to refer to a whole lot of interrelated and overlapping but still distinct concepts, some of which happen to map to reality, some of which don't, that's all there is to it. If someone is using the word "society" to refer to some concept that doesn't map to reality (let's call this "society1" in the following), they can correctly state that "society doesn't exist", while someone else equally correctly can say "society does exist" by using a definition of "society" that does map to reality (let's call this "society2" in the following). You just have to be careful to not mix up the two concepts, even though they are being referred to using the same word. The fact that society1 does not exist does not say anything about society2's existence or vice versa--any conclusion of that sort would be an equivocation fallacy.
> For example, if a person lives a hermit lifestyle, are they still living within society, or does it take interacting with others to be part of a society?
Well, give me your definition of "society" and I can tell you whether they are. Without a definition, it's a meaningless question, as for some definitions, they are, for some, they are not, so there is no generally applicable answer.
As for the rest of what you wrote, I think it's a great example to try and use as the basis for the analogy I tried with a 10th century person, as I think that you are not appreciating the applicability of that analogy yet. Consider that same point that you are making, but try to replace the area that we are trying to understand with medicine instead of sociology, from the point of view of an educated person in the 10th century. What part of your argument couldn't equally be made by that person about medicine when basing it on the knowledge of their time?
You objected above that they knew the basics of physics, sort of. But even if we accept that premise: Were they even considering medicine to be a problem to be tackled with the tools of physics? Weren't demons a metaphysical thing that wasn't subject to physics? It might be just obvious to you now that the body is governed by biochemistry and mechanics, which thus in some way reduces it all to molecular dynamics, so it is obvious to you in hindsight that they maybe had the basic versions of the tools to investigate it all. But that was not their perspective, that is all hindsight. They were thinking in terms of humors. They were seeing overwhelming complexity. They were not aware that the ideas of speed and friction would "just" have to be generalized and applied to the human body to fix genetic diseases. The question is not what that person could have thought if they had combined the knowledge at the time in the right way (i.e., what you now know to be the right way), but what they would actually have thought, how they would have interpreted and applied what they knew.
As for the influence of a changing environment on scientific discovery, I think your perspective makes things unnecessarily difficult. You are conceptualizing a changing environment as a changing reality. But why not conceptualize it as a change in experiment? What I mean is: When society changes, and let's assume that it changes to a degree that existing knowledge about how society acts is not usefully applicable anymore, does that mean that reality has changed and therefore the knowledge is now wrong? Or isn't it rather that the knowledge is still perfectly valid, but its scope is limited to a form of society that just currently doesn't exist? When we replaced horses with steam engines, did that make our scientific knowledge about horses incorrect? Or wasn't it rather that our scientific knowledge about horses was simply not applicable to the source of power we used for carriages anymore, but still perfectly correct within its scope? The utility faded, because horses are not part of everyday life anymore, but did that change the correctness of the knowledge? Does that mean that it wasn't science?
Now, science obviously always strives to generalize and unify, so a theory of sociology that applies more broadly than what you describe certainly would be desirable. But that is something that applies to all areas of science and to all theories in existence, without exception. (The theory of) Electromagnetism wasn't always a thing. Electricity was one thing, magnetism another. Until people figured out about one and a half centuries ago that they could be modeled by a common framework, thus creating the model of electromagnetism that is more broadly applicable than either of them, and even more broadly applicable than the two simply combined. Neither the theory of electricity nor the theory of magnetism allows you to model antennas and radio transmission, but electromagnetism does. And further theorizing and investigation a century or so later led to further unification with the weak force to form the model of the electroweak interaction. The point is that there is no such thing as "the fundamental model", there is only always the current state of knowledge, and the history of science is filled with models that at some point seemed very fundamental but later were integrated with other ideas to form more broadly applicable theories of which the formerly seemingly fundamental models were just special cases. Experience tells us that considering some model fundamental is more often than not just myopic--all we can really tell is that it is more fundamental than what came before, but that does not mean that it's the end of the road. Therefore, I don't see how that could be a criterion for distinguishing the scientific from the non-scientific?!
Can such a model arise from a combination of the scientific method (observation, experimentation, etc...) and lack of adequate tooling to study the body?
Well, can it arise or did it arise? For all I know, little is known about how it arose, though there is some speculation that it was maybe based on how blood clots/separates, so I guess that at least suggests that it can arise through empirical observation?
But how is that relevant to the question at hand? Especially given that I just chose humors and demons (concepts that were actually somewhat in conflict) as examples, and specifically as examples of hilariously wrong ideas--medical knowledge was not limited to those two ideas, and it's not like all of it was terrible. Some of the knowledge of how certain plants helped against certain symptoms, for example, was actually pretty decent.
Which is maybe the right moment to answer your other question:
> How do you think we acquired knowledge before the scientific method was devised?
How do you think we spoke to each other before grammar was devised?
The scientific method was not "devised", that is simply the name we give today to the (so far only) methodology that we have discovered to result in reliable knowledge about the world, and that we are formalizing and refining over the centuries to be more and more reliable by countering more and more weaknesses as they are being discovered.
People simply applied the method, without any explicit intention of "applying the scientific method", and without following any explicit strategy. People observed reality, people tried out ideas they had and observed the results, and repeated and refined ideas that worked, discarding ideas that didn't. The same people also used other strategies to form beliefs about the world, so their overall approach to gaining knowledge about the world was not particularly scientific. But the point is that you don't have to have a concious concept of the scientific method in order to use it to gain knowledge about the world, it's just that it helps a lot if you do, as that allows you to not waste time on other approaches, and maybe more importantly, to work on improving the method('s implementation).
Now, you could argue that modern scientific methodology is quite a bit advanced from crude try and error in past times, and that certainly is true. However, the original point of contention in this thread was the idea (that you suggested was not controversial) that culture could stand on its own as a reliable source of knowledge without scientific validation, so the question was not whether basic try and error is just as good as a double-blind medical study (which it obviously isn't), but whether something that is not even the result of try and error is just as good as something that is the result of modern scientific methodology.
Now, so far you have mostly tried to argue that there are areas where you know that scientific inquiry won't make progress, and your arguments for that so far have not been particularly convincing. While I agree that sociology probably in many ways is still at the "try and error" stage, and that the complexity seems overwhelming, and even that it is one of the likelier candidates to never achieve any sort of unified theory, I don't see any justification for you assertion that it's actually impossible.
But maybe more importantly: Even if I were to grant you that real progress in the scientific inquiry of sociology is impossible (which might be the case, after all--I just don't see any justification so far to actually accept that proposition), how would that be relevant to the original point of contention? Even if scientific progress is impossible, what is your justification that any other source of knowledge (such as culture) would be reliable?
>"Even if scientific progress is impossible, what is your justification that any other source of knowledge (such as culture) would be reliable?"
We'll get to that later. Over the course of this debate we've been flitting around from idea to idea, I'd like to restore some focus.
Going back to the question I asked previously about the humours, my question was not "did the theory arise from the application of the scientific method?", but rather "could the theory have arisen from the application of the scientific method?". In other words, take what you know about the humours, could this have arisen through application of the scientific method (observation, testing of hypotheses, etc...)? Now that I've hopefully clarified the question, what is your answer?
I think I did actually answer that? It possibly did, so it can?
Really, that isn't so much a question about the model of humors as it is about the definition of "the scientific method" that you happen to be using. If you define it to align with the modern understanding of the philosophy of science, then no, I don't see how it could possibly arise from that. But if you define it more broadly to encompass the ancient roots of today's philosophy of science, as might be appropriate when discussing past times, then it well might have. Even if the methodology isn't exactly up to modern standards, it is still useful to distinguish the predecessors of modern science from fundamentally different contemporary approaches (some of which have their own modern day forms).
The core idea that was extended into modern science is empiricism, and it seems that the model of humors might very well have been at least inspired by an empirical observation of how blood separates into four distinguishable "fluids", which might be enough to say that it could have arisen from the (proto-?)scientific method?
Really, it's just another case where you have to be careful to not fall victim to essentialism. Whether the model of humors could have arisen from the scientific method depends on the definition of "scientific method" you are using. For some definitions, it could, for some it clearly could not. You just have to be careful to not mix up the different definitions in the same context.
Yes, so you disagree with the prior commenter. You think science is the "validator" of knowledge.
"I know that I am in pain" is not validated by science, and science has no role even to play in "validating" it.
"I know that science works" is not validated by science and science has no role in validating it.
etc.
It would seem there are probably knowledge claims which belong in the domain of culture that are likewise orthogonal to science ("I know that we liked the new Star Wars").
> You think science is the "validator" of knowledge.
Where did you get that from?
> "I know that I am in pain" is not validated by science, and science has no role even to play in "validating" it.
What is your justification for considering that an instance of cultural knowledge?
> "I know that science works" is not validated by science and science has no role in validating it.
So, how do you know that science works? Or are you saying that it doesn't work or that you don't know whether it works?
> It would seem there are probably knowledge claims which belong in the domain of culture that are likewise orthogonal to science
It would seem that something seeming to you to be the case is not a particularly convincing argument.
> ("I know that we liked the new Star Wars").
Are you saying this claim is not derived from empirical observation of "we" and/or not accessible to falsification (like, you think it is impossible to ask a representative sample of "we" whether they like Star Wars)? If that is what you mean, how do you know it, then? If that is not what you mean, how is that application of the scientific method orthogonal to science?
> My examples were to show that there are knowledge claims where this fails.
Except that your example was just an equivocation of no substantial relevance to the problem at hand that also doesn't really hold?
First of all, you should be well aware that we were talking about knowledge about external reality, so it's simply irrelevant that you can define knowledge to encompass awareness of individual personal experiences ... yes, you can, but that wasn't the topic of the discussion, and isn't contested by anyone, and thus doesn't contribute anything to the discussion.
Secondly, I hope very much that you were not implying that you can know that what you experience as the cause of pain is in fact the cause, because that is contradicted by phantom pain, which requires scientific inquiry to (a) know about in general and (b) distinguish from pain caused by what you experience it to be caused by in the specific instance. Which is also the only way we know pain is even a common thing amongst people, as well as the reason we know what causes pain in many instances.
And then, well, really, to an extent we can actually observe both causes for pain and whether someone is experiencing pain without the need to rely on self-reports, so the gap between what is purely subjective about the experience of pain and what can be observed about it scientifically is not as massive as you seem to suggest.
> So, if you restrict the domain of inquiry to the things that science best studies (causes and their origins) then science is the best to study it.
I didn't restrict anything, I just pointed out that your analogy is irrelevant to the topic at hand. The topic of the discussion was what methods can be used to reliably obtain knowledge about the external world, and being aware of individual personal experience just isn't.
> The point was that there are other domains.
OK, so what other domains of knowledge about the external world are there?
Myth and superstition are a huge part of every culture. Cultural knowledge includes ideas such as "sex with a virgin cures AIDS" or "back pain is the result of a black magic curse (Hexenschuss)" which are decidedly less valid than scientific knowledge.
EDIT:Oh, and remember to always be polite during this debate.
Everyone Knows you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar...
>>> Mr. Leibowitz was a Democratic commissioner at the FTC from 2004-13 and chairman beginning in 2009. As a partner at the law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell, he represents both technology companies and broadband providers.
> The reference to both industries reads as an effort to be upfront about any potential conflict of interest, but also to suggest that Leibowitz has clients on both sides of the issue, so his argument is dispassionate. Tech companies, historically, support net neutrality, while broadband providers oppose it.
The op-ed was prefaced with a contextual paragraph. So this wasn't a "sleeper" influencing public opinion, a la Ender's Game. The WSJ made sure this highly-public person was properly contextualized.
The second paragraph of the commentary by the The Intercept contained your quoted section, which is at the end of the op-ed and not visible in the first page of the paywalled opinion article.
>Consider the core principles of net neutrality, which I have long supported: unfettered access of the entire (lawful) internet and transparency about broadband providers’ practices. [emphasis mine]
Only Comcast and its cronies feel the need to "contextualize" with "lawful" everyone who actually supports NN doesn't feel that need.
> No Blocking. Consumers who subscribe to a retail broadband Internet access service must get what they have paid for—access to all (lawful) destinations on the Internet. This essential and well-accepted principle has long been a tenet of Commission policy, stretching back to its landmark decision in Carterfone, which protected a customer’s right to connect a telephone to the monopoly telephone network.
They're quoting the official order, written by Net Neutrality supporters.
I would like to add that many net neutrality supporters were upset with the "lawful" language being included at the time. I'm sure if you look at some old threads here you can see it discussed. It opens the door to blocking protocols (like BitTorrent, which Comcast has been caught blocking in the past) that have a reputation for being used unlawfully. I also wonder if it would be a way to block things like tor, which have an unsavory reputation to many people.
Fair point, but I wouldn't expect to see anything but a corporate friendly op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, nor would I think anyone who regularly reads the Wall Street Journal. Even the New York Times can be pretty corporate/middle of the road.
The WSJ regularly had Op-eds from Obama and other democrats, they even allowed the Iranian president a space to spew his hate. I'd argue they are just as open about who can write in their op-eds as any large newspaper.
Op-eds are often supposed to be seen as different (and interesting) than what the paper's editorial board and columnists typically argue. "Op-ed" is supposed to be an abbreviation for "opposite editorial" -- though of course the pinion editor (who is usually part of the editorial board) has final say in that
It seems worth clarifying, though, that "Opposite" is referring to the layout of the page (ie, the "facing the editorial page"), and not to the position in the debate (not "arguing against the editorial position"). The two earliest first cited usages in the OED makes this clear:
1924 R. H. Lyman World Almanac 25/1
This ‘op. ed. page’ (page opposite the editorial page) is
unique in American newspapers. It is a page of opinion in
all the arts.
1931 J. W. Barrett World, Flesh, & Messrs. Pulitzer iv. 82
Swope developed..the idea of a distinctive ‘opposite
editorial page’ consisting of two ‘columnists’, one book
reviewer and the daily output of the dramatic critic. We
called this the ‘op-ed’ for short.
You are correct about the contextual paragraph being at the end of the article and not the beginning.
I try to avoid reading Op-Eds for the most part, but I believe it is quite common (maybe even standard practice?) for them to come at the end of the article rather than the beginning. And if the contextual paragraph comes at the end of the article, then it follows that it would be behind a paywall that only shows the first paragraph to non-subscribers.
My point is that The Intercept did a better job of including the important information as it was cited up-post in a useful location for the reader than did the actual original article that was (in error) being defended as clear. You can dismiss this, and perhaps everything in the thread and/or the WSJ, but if it's worth posting, it's worth being accurate. But, if it's all so unimportant that nobody on this thread cares, then why post any comments about it at all?
That's my question, because personally I find funny the parts I don't find sad. Seriously, did you watch the comedy videos included in the decision by the chairman and the preceding industry event? They are included in my flagged comment below.
It seems like the author is just looking for something to be angry about. He ascribed his own meaning to a disclaimer in an article and then gets angry that it doesn't meet his expectation. Worse than that is the fact that it really shouldn't matter -- Jon Leibowitz could be head ball-fondler at Comcast for all it matters to his argument. This entire piece is spreading massive amounts of FUD because a guy wrote a thing and wasn't explicit enough for his taste.
My favorite bit:
> To go a step further, Leibowitz’s view is also wrong. Net neutrality supporters fear that kicking enforcement over to the FTC means that broadband providers would only get caught discriminating against websites after the fact. And the FTC is focusing on stopping “deception,” which critics have said could mean that if a company discloses to the customer it will block or throttle certain content, the agency won’t step in.
Author apparently doesn't understand that the following paragraph is literally the intended outcome of the plan. It's right there in explicit detail on pg 133 of the plan.
> We eliminate the conduct rules adopted in the Title II Order—including the general conduct rule and the prohibitions on paid prioritization, blocking, and throttling. We do so for three reasons...
I just don't see the issue here. They disclose that his law firm represents broadband providers. That, the fact that it's an Op-Ed, and the content of the article ought to be enough for readers to understand that it's an opinion piece and likely to be biased.
Is it just my techbubble, but how can such a law come through, if the general public opposes it so much?
I mean how corrupt or ignorant have you to be to not notice this.
>how can such a law come through, if the general public opposes it so much?
It's not a law, it's a decision made by a federal regulatory agency. Only Congress can enact laws. The FCC commissioners are appointed by the president, so they're more like a branch of the executive branch than anything else. Congress can overrule them, but they're unlikely to do so under the current makeup, because:
>how corrupt or ignorant have you to be
The Republican Party is plumbing new depths of corruption and ignorance by the hour. Nothing would surprise me at this point.
Except it was a Republican who tried to move a NN type law through, and it was the Democrats who only wanted to move forward with the common carrier designation.
Net neutrality itself "not a law, it's a decision made by a federal regulatory agency". It's a government regulation of 2011 (with questionable authority) and now it's lessened in a rather mild way.
The problem is that there is no law because Congress is bought and paid for and hence never makes laws that disadvantage corporate interests. The FCC was attempting to paper over the lack of law. That attempt only succeeded with the support of the executive branch, which has now removed said support.
Which is how Trump is/was able to do so much. Obama was ruling by executive fiat. If congress (Democrats) was doing its job, it would have passed laws. Executive Orders are not laws and can be instantly reversed. Democrats were just as happy has republicans to have their dictator in power, make your bed and lie in it.
In my memory congress has been controlled by Republicans for most of recent history. When there was Democrat control, the president was a Republican. So there hasn't been a period of time when you can "blame" Democrats for the lack of legislation passed for the benefit of the population rather than big money. This is why for example the ACA had to be rushed, in the time between Obama being elected and Republicans gaining control in Congress.
These things are not to be decided by majority. For example, you cannot vote up to take someone's lawful property, even if the general public supports this (which, I'm sure, it may be induced to, as we can see with this issue).
I think people need reminding that we are a republic, not a democracy. Regardless of what you think of this Net Neutrality rule change, this is how things work in a republic.
I wish all our energy being spent on NN would go towards breaking ISP monopolies, it would achieve the same goals of NN including better services, cheaper prices.
I'd decouple the content creation from the network delivery. How soon before cable companies start zero-rating their own content? Also, local regulations granting monopolies have to start being rolled back, or municipalities buy the infrastructure from the ISPs and let them compete to use it.
While there is a case to be made about news op-eds and their overall influence this article is more noise than content. The disclaimer says he represents broadband providers. There is no coming back even if it says technology companies.
I didn't expect anything different from the WSJ, but it's worth pointing out that pro-net neutrality is also "corporate" in a way. Small to medium size Internet commerce / content businesses have largely been the driving force behind public awareness of net neutrality, in my opinion.
(I've noticed this time around that the largest Internet companies have largely kept quiet about the issue this time around. The fact that there has been such a big public response to this to me shows how important keeping an Internet around that is more than just Google/Facebook/Amazon is.)
WSJ did a really good job with this too. I opened the News app on my iPad after work today and found this story at the top of my feed. Their stories are usually paywalled, so I was surprised they featured anywhere near the top, and I tapped, curious.
The argument did seem pretty fair and balanced. It presented both sides (or seemed to). On reflection (and I wouldn't have reflected if not for The Intercept's story) the article basically echoed Ajit Pai's argument saying anyone who gets up in arms about regulating ISPs is overreacting.
And it almost made me believe I was naive for thinking the repeal was a grave moment in Internet history.
I don't know how they got the story so highly ranked on Apple News, but the pessimist in me wants to say money changed hands.
We need to seriously reconsider what we want out of journalism. I don't want to live anywhere where this sort of media is okay. I'm not sure why anyone else is suddenly okay with this either. The "Free Market" was supposed to be a tool to more efficiently organize labor and capital, not enslave us. It is supposed to work for us, it is our tool. But if readers are now _okay_ with literal shilling in media, then that's it. We've been captured by our own tools, slaves to our own machines.
I keep questioning my decision to have a Washington Post subscription, but I'll sleep better tonight knowing it goes towards something that at least _tries_ to be journalism.