All I can say about this as a dude with a doctorate in physics and an interest in foundations is: I guess, dude, if this is how you want to live your life.
It isn't that I agree with the person who wrote Asimov the letter (in fact, based on his description, I frankly wonder if the letter writer wasn't my father). Its just that there is something subtly wrong with Asimov's view of the progress of scientific knowledge.
At least its extremely instrumentalist. If we think of knowledge as a sort of temporary mental state which lives between setting up a physical state and making a measurement, then, yes, knowledge has progressed in exactly the way that Asimov is saying. And that is nothing to sneeze at.
But like consider quantum mechanics. People still cannot make heads or tails of what the ontology of quantum mechanics is, despite some compelling stories. And that makes perfect sense since QM is not compatible with special or general relativity! So its dumb to try and make sense of what QM tells us about what is. So why not try to understand what the ontology of QFT is? This seems reasonable, since QFT is capable of making correct predictions (at least in the scattering regime) and is invariant. But no one on earth can write down a coherent mathematical theory of QFT, so interpretation is even more difficult than QM. And this is yet to even try to tackle with conceptual gap between GR and QM/QFT, where we genuinely are perplexed but at least have good reason to think that the final interpretation of QM or spacetime has to have something to do with the way that the two theories interact.
From this point of view as our ability to connect experiment with outcome has increased our ability to actually say what it is we are even talking about outside of the purely instrumental has decreased since the 19th Century. Back then we though we knew that there were atoms or electrons or whatever. Light waves or photons. Now, I would argue very strenuously, we genuinely have no understanding at all of what those things are outside of a set of purely instrumental definitions which leave a lot to be desired.
My personal understanding here is that really there are no electrons, photons, quantum fields, masses, gravity. There is just the single substance of the universe which we have learned to manipulate and predict with ever improving precision (in limited cases). Maybe that is knowledge? Doesn't always feel like it.
Forgive me if this is a stupid interpretation and question, but are you basically saying that the tools we use to measure the universe actually produce our knowledge, rather than reflect an accurate model of reality? As in, in an alternative universe where we used different measurement tools, we would have discovered entirely different phenomena that we would consider to be part of the universe, but is really just a different way of interpreting the single substance of the universe?
If so this is compelling to me. In the same way that or senses impact our view of what exists and how it exists, but it's really just an interpretation of what's out there.
> It is the mark of the marvelous toleration of the Athenians that they let this continue for decades and that it wasn't till Socrates turned seventy that they broke down and forced him to drink poison.
"All models are wrong. Some models are useful." is the way that I have heard this thesis quipped. I suppose "All models are wrong. Some models are more wrong than others." would fit Asimov's points better, but I've never actually heard that one
>In his discussions of such matters as "What is justice?" or "What is virtue?" he took the attitude that he knew nothing and had to be instructed by others. By pretending ignorance, Socrates lured others into propounding their views on such abstractions. Socrates then, by a series of ignorant-sounding questions, forced the others into such a mélange of self-contradictions that they would finally break down and admit they didn't know what they were talking about.
See also: Jordan Peterson et al. Our tendency to favor logical correctness over empirical correctness is one of our most dangerous cognitive biases. It's very easy to convince people to believe arguments that are perfectly logically consistent in their own self-constructed reality but have no bearing on empirical reality, over arguments that conform to empirical reality but may not have perfect logical consistency. Empirical reality is messy and it's difficult to construct a perfectly consistent set of axioms around it; constructed reality is neat and thus trivial to construct sets of perfectly consistent axioms around it.
This wonderful essay explicitly criticizes one genre of philosophy popular in academic English literature departments, but I think it also implicitly undermines another genre popular in academic English-speaking philosophy departments. The latter frequently propound something like the so-called correspondence theory of truth, yet they also treat truth and falsity as absolutes, mutually exclusive. There's no room for approximation and degrees of accuracy.
> The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong. However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts
When my daughter was in middle school we were discussing some concept she learned in Biology that wasn't precisely wrong but wasn't right in all use cases. I told her that a model didn't have to be true to be useful. She said "that's a good way of thinking about it" and since that is such a rare complement from a teenager I have remembered it ever since.
I think it's true though. I think a good science teacher can say from the outset that we don't know it all and science is always growing and changing.
It isn't only about the degree of wrongness, but its type:
1. Vacuous, which provide no useful insight beyond what is obviously deducible. Such as "nearsightedness is caused by the wrong shape of the eye".
2. Vanity, which provide useless elaboration of something that is very well understood in a much simpler form, with no realistic hope of any future insight. Such as most of linguistics.
3. Pointless. Explain something that is difficult to get to know,
because it matters so little. While technically correct, the actual facts matter so little that they result in no realistic improvement of any kind, and no decisions are changed as the result of the new knowledge. Such as the age of Earth.
4. Theoretically wrong, those that the article is talking about. Even though theoretically wrong, the are so nearly equivalent to the actual truth, that the difference doesn't matter in practice.
5. Practically wrong. Those that "sound good" so that people stick to them, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary. Such as that obesity is caused by overeating, in spite of the near universal failure in practice, in the last instance of Ozempic making people look like walking corpses, rather than anything like a healthy body. This is the kind of errors meant by those who write to people like Asimov.
> 3. Pointless. Explain something that is difficult to get to know, because it matters so little. While technically correct, the actual facts matter so little that they result in no realistic improvement of any kind, and no decisions are changed as the result of the new knowledge. Such as the age of Earth.
It's bizarre to even consider that investigating the age of the Earth is "pointless". Finding out the age of our planet and other celestial bodies matters a lot in astronomy! Understanding the universe is the opposite of pointless, it's fascinating.
This is an article where I agree with its statements yet disagree with its spirit. Everything written is true, but has to be put in context - the writer he's responding to was challenging these specific claims:
> what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the Universe ... We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships ... What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical Universe ...
I don't think there's anything wrong with making casual statements of this sort, but I also don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out (in response) that these statements are philosophically unrigorous. I mean, what makes something a "basic rule", and how can you tell that we have apprehended all such rules in existence?
"The young man then quoted with approval what Socrates had said on learning that the Delphic oracle had proclaimed him the wisest man in Greece. "If I am the wisest man," said Socrates, "it is because I alone know that I know nothing."
This is a common misquote with similar frequency to perhaps "Play it again, Sam." In his Apology (not meaning apology, from apo-logia, speaking for oneself, i.e. defense) Socrates says:
"Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing?utm...).
The context is that Socrates was puzzled by the Delphic Oracle's declaration that he is the wisest man. The man mentioned is an unnamed politician who was known to be wise.
Agreed, I think there's a culture of overzealous "correction" with respect to historical quotations. It's not completely irrelevant that it's a conversation with an oracle or that his attitude was puzzlement in response to being regarded wisest, as contrasted with him just declaring it unprovoked.
But still, they are expressions of intellectual humility that come from not knowing and contrasting it to the attitude of claiming to know without really knowing, that essence is the same even with the "correction" and complements Asimov's essay either way. So I think "misquote" is a little strong here.
Yes. People like to think in terms of 100% or 0%. Never anything in between. Even though almost everything falls somewhere in between. That's why I like bits and dislike q-bits, for example.
The irony of my own statement dawned on me when I discovered that some people suggest that 2 + 2 does not necessarily equal 4, but could also equal 22.
There is no doubt that the exact sciences have something more than philosophy.
It's always a pleasure to read Isaac. Well, almost, I should say.
I grew up fascinated by these essays from maybe age 8 onward.
Now I realize the pervasive bad faith in them, e.g. dismissing Murray (The Bell Curve) and enthronizing the in-retrospect-irrelevant Jay Gould. I knew his novels were kind of silly, but he was supposed to be a Scientist educating us in the scientific view of the world, goddamn it.
> enthronizing the in-retrospect-irrelevant Jay Gould
What? Stephen Jay Gould is not irrelevant.
> I knew his novels were kind of silly
They are not silly. They belong to a different era of Science Fiction, sure. But silly? (He did engage in intentionally goofy humor, of course, but I don't think that's what you meant).
> he was supposed to be a Scientist educating us in the scientific view of the world, goddamn it.
26 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 54.5 ms ] threadFunny how we don't even fully understand what happens when we crack our joints but are certain about how the Universe "essentially" works.
It isn't that I agree with the person who wrote Asimov the letter (in fact, based on his description, I frankly wonder if the letter writer wasn't my father). Its just that there is something subtly wrong with Asimov's view of the progress of scientific knowledge.
At least its extremely instrumentalist. If we think of knowledge as a sort of temporary mental state which lives between setting up a physical state and making a measurement, then, yes, knowledge has progressed in exactly the way that Asimov is saying. And that is nothing to sneeze at.
But like consider quantum mechanics. People still cannot make heads or tails of what the ontology of quantum mechanics is, despite some compelling stories. And that makes perfect sense since QM is not compatible with special or general relativity! So its dumb to try and make sense of what QM tells us about what is. So why not try to understand what the ontology of QFT is? This seems reasonable, since QFT is capable of making correct predictions (at least in the scattering regime) and is invariant. But no one on earth can write down a coherent mathematical theory of QFT, so interpretation is even more difficult than QM. And this is yet to even try to tackle with conceptual gap between GR and QM/QFT, where we genuinely are perplexed but at least have good reason to think that the final interpretation of QM or spacetime has to have something to do with the way that the two theories interact.
From this point of view as our ability to connect experiment with outcome has increased our ability to actually say what it is we are even talking about outside of the purely instrumental has decreased since the 19th Century. Back then we though we knew that there were atoms or electrons or whatever. Light waves or photons. Now, I would argue very strenuously, we genuinely have no understanding at all of what those things are outside of a set of purely instrumental definitions which leave a lot to be desired.
My personal understanding here is that really there are no electrons, photons, quantum fields, masses, gravity. There is just the single substance of the universe which we have learned to manipulate and predict with ever improving precision (in limited cases). Maybe that is knowledge? Doesn't always feel like it.
If so this is compelling to me. In the same way that or senses impact our view of what exists and how it exists, but it's really just an interpretation of what's out there.
Savage.
My wife and I always argue about that, she loves Socrates and I find him utterly insufferable. Plato didn't do him any favors.
See also: Jordan Peterson et al. Our tendency to favor logical correctness over empirical correctness is one of our most dangerous cognitive biases. It's very easy to convince people to believe arguments that are perfectly logically consistent in their own self-constructed reality but have no bearing on empirical reality, over arguments that conform to empirical reality but may not have perfect logical consistency. Empirical reality is messy and it's difficult to construct a perfectly consistent set of axioms around it; constructed reality is neat and thus trivial to construct sets of perfectly consistent axioms around it.
> The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong. However, I don't think that's so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts
> Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.
Stuart: Oh, Sheldon, I'm afraid you couldn't be more wrong.
Sheldon: More wrong? Wrong is an absolute state and not subject to gradation.
Stuart: Of course it is. It's a little wrong to say a tomato is a vegetable, it's very wrong to say it's a suspension bridge.
I think it's true though. I think a good science teacher can say from the outset that we don't know it all and science is always growing and changing.
1. Vacuous, which provide no useful insight beyond what is obviously deducible. Such as "nearsightedness is caused by the wrong shape of the eye".
2. Vanity, which provide useless elaboration of something that is very well understood in a much simpler form, with no realistic hope of any future insight. Such as most of linguistics.
3. Pointless. Explain something that is difficult to get to know, because it matters so little. While technically correct, the actual facts matter so little that they result in no realistic improvement of any kind, and no decisions are changed as the result of the new knowledge. Such as the age of Earth.
4. Theoretically wrong, those that the article is talking about. Even though theoretically wrong, the are so nearly equivalent to the actual truth, that the difference doesn't matter in practice.
5. Practically wrong. Those that "sound good" so that people stick to them, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary. Such as that obesity is caused by overeating, in spite of the near universal failure in practice, in the last instance of Ozempic making people look like walking corpses, rather than anything like a healthy body. This is the kind of errors meant by those who write to people like Asimov.
It's bizarre to even consider that investigating the age of the Earth is "pointless". Finding out the age of our planet and other celestial bodies matters a lot in astronomy! Understanding the universe is the opposite of pointless, it's fascinating.
Or did you mean something else?
> what I meant was that we now know the basic rules governing the Universe ... We also know the basic rules governing the subatomic particles and their interrelationships ... What's more, we have found that the galaxies and clusters of galaxies are the basic units of the physical Universe ...
I don't think there's anything wrong with making casual statements of this sort, but I also don't think there's anything wrong with pointing out (in response) that these statements are philosophically unrigorous. I mean, what makes something a "basic rule", and how can you tell that we have apprehended all such rules in existence?
This is a common misquote with similar frequency to perhaps "Play it again, Sam." In his Apology (not meaning apology, from apo-logia, speaking for oneself, i.e. defense) Socrates says:
"... ἔοικα γοῦν τούτου γε σμικρῷ τινι αὐτῷ τούτῳ σοφώτερος εἶναι, ὅτι ἃ μὴ οἶδα οὐδὲ οἴομαι εἰδέναι."
"Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks he knows. I neither know nor think I know" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_that_I_know_nothing?utm...).
The context is that Socrates was puzzled by the Delphic Oracle's declaration that he is the wisest man. The man mentioned is an unnamed politician who was known to be wise.
But still, they are expressions of intellectual humility that come from not knowing and contrasting it to the attitude of claiming to know without really knowing, that essence is the same even with the "correction" and complements Asimov's essay either way. So I think "misquote" is a little strong here.
The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37481166 - Sept 2023 (124 comments)
The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29811788 - Jan 2022 (5 comments)
The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24055125 - Aug 2020 (2 comments)
The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17818069 - Aug 2018 (11 comments)
The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082585 - Dec 2016 (16 comments)
The Relativity of Wrong by Isaac Asimov (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654774 - May 2016 (60 comments)
Isaac Asimov: The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9629797 - May 2015 (138 comments)
Isaac Asimov - The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1147968 - Feb 2010 (32 comments)
The irony of my own statement dawned on me when I discovered that some people suggest that 2 + 2 does not necessarily equal 4, but could also equal 22.
There is no doubt that the exact sciences have something more than philosophy.
It's always a pleasure to read Isaac. Well, almost, I should say.
Now I realize the pervasive bad faith in them, e.g. dismissing Murray (The Bell Curve) and enthronizing the in-retrospect-irrelevant Jay Gould. I knew his novels were kind of silly, but he was supposed to be a Scientist educating us in the scientific view of the world, goddamn it.
What? Stephen Jay Gould is not irrelevant.
> I knew his novels were kind of silly
They are not silly. They belong to a different era of Science Fiction, sure. But silly? (He did engage in intentionally goofy humor, of course, but I don't think that's what you meant).
> he was supposed to be a Scientist educating us in the scientific view of the world, goddamn it.
Asimov? He was!