Ask HN: How to tell what's true from false or right or wrong?
Sometimes when people tell me things I ask myself is that really true?. For example, a friend and I had a discussion earlier about islam and he is muslim and he told me the way the big bang started was predicted when Islam first came out and actually a lot of scientific stuff was predicted in Islam's first stages how can that be possible?.
My point is are we suppose to just believe what we are told? How do you regard something as creditable? A lot of the times When I'm learning new knowledge I'm always focusing on the source credibility is that wrong of me to do? I take everything with a grain of salt but if I'm studying biology and is a book by let say Richard Dawkings I would credit the information accurate and not distrust it. Is that wrong?
How do you figure out the truth from false knowledge?
37 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 94.8 ms ] threadhttp://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/03/baloney-de...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World
Why People Believe Weird Things - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things
Bad Science - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Science_%28book%29
Not if you're science-literate. Remember that a scientist assumes an idea unaccompanied by evidence is most likely false, while a nonscientist assumes the opposite.
Let's say someone hears a claim about Bigfoot. If he's a scientist, he will assume Bigfoot is a myth until hard evidence appears. But a nonscientist (a person technically known as an airhead) believes that Bigfoot is real until he is proven not to exist. But consider the burden of evidence -- for the airhead to be dissuaded from belief in Bigfoot, something called proof of a negative would be required, which is an impossible evidentiary burden. After all, Bigfoot could be hiding under some rock on a faraway planet, which means he can't ever be conclusively disproven.
Science is an extremely productive outlook, and the modern world is largely defined by science and the scientific outlook. One of the reasons is that scientists don't waste time carrying other people's burdens of evidence, like a belief in Bigfoot.
> How do you regard something as creditable?
Solid, repeated, empirical evidence, created by multiple disinterested observers. Everything else is unsubstantiated rumor.
> How do you figure out the truth from false knowledge?
A skeptical outlook and an understanding of how science works.
http://arachnoid.com/building_science
To answer your questions: No, you should not believe everything you are told. You should look at how credible sources are. I err with science, and for me, religion that discredits science doesn't work. I do watch a lot of conspiracy theory things... so many sources are full of absolute crap, but it is fun and I find strings or theories, but little proof or truth. I'm afraid that if I didn't use my brain, I'd wind up believing all sorts of things. Things I know are untrue. Keep your eyes open, keep the healthy questioning and skeptisicm.
My other advice is to remember that the truth can change. Science disproves itself as we discover new things. And this is fine and expected - as long as your views change with new facts, you'll be fine. My big example is always religion - If any god or gods give me unrefutable truth that they exist, I'll believe in whichever god or gods gave me proof. Otherwise, I'll trust in science, keep some distrust for the sensational small-study 'breakthroughs' and keep on my own path.
Judaism also has a cosmology. What is truer: Islam or Judaism.. or something else... like the experience itself that it describes?
Ironically, maybe being able to hold these possibilities of truth actually takes you to that experience of absolute truth.. where complete opposites can be both completely true and completely false.
This way you can even test a hypothesis you don't even understand. Just get a prediction out of someone who does and see if it checks out without being otherwise obvious. Again, obvious beforehand, not afterwards. There are a couple of heavy tomes you can read about it, a couple of common tricks to side step the test (ad hoc hypotheses) but in principle that's it.
For example, you test the theory or relativity every time you use GPS. It usually works.
Everything else is a matter of taste. Do you like consistency? Logical structure? Elegance? Authority? Peer review? You can make up whatever test you like. There's bayesian approach, you can try to consciously correct for your biases... but it's hard to beat the scientific method.
For starters, bear these two sentences in mind whenever you find yourself asking whether something is true or false:
1. Knowledge is justified true belief. 2. "How do you know?"
Number 1 tells you upfront that knowledge is belief. But it's not just any kind of belief. It is belief that you can justify to be true. Note how we don't say "knowledge is truth" (because knowledge only holds for as long as it cannot be demonstrated to be false). There are, of course, different kinds of knowledge, which have different levels of justification. E.g. pure mathematics is a kind of knowledge with the highest level of justification because conjectures can be proven or disproven and there is no dispute (unless you make a mistake in your proof, but then peer review will catch your mistake, unless the peers have been drinking...)
Number 2 is just an easier formulation of number 1. You use this question recursively until you start to feel you are being absurd or silly. E.g. Tommy told me he saw a police shoot Michael Brown. How do I know this is true? Because Tommy is trustworthy. How do I know Tommy is trustworthy? Because Tommy is my friend and would never lie to me. How do I know Tommy would never lie to me? Because I have known him for X years and everything he has said in the past have turned out to be largely true. Etc. ad nauseum.
If you happen to know anybody doing or having done the IB diploma, you can ask them about ToK (Theory of Knowledge), because ToK is a required subject in the IB diploma. They may put on a smug smile for a few seconds and start talking. (I did IB diploma myself.) In fact you'll give them good practice to get better at ToK.
I want to give you different answer, which almost everyone will disagree with.
My answer is this - you ALWAYS know what is right or wrong, true or false. You don't need anyone to tell you this. And you certainly don't need "evidence". Evidence is for people who lack imagination. Leaders create their own evidence.
'Creating evidence'... This makes me cringe and brings images of politicians to mind. I believe some pretty odd things sometimes (singularity movment.. 30 years, i'm waiting) but if there is no actual evidence, or if I don't see results in some way, or if it conflicts with science and things with evidence... I'm not likely to believe.
And dude. My own comfort levels? I moved across an ocean and married a man that practices chaos magick (I wound up reading some stuff, and am starting to practice. There was no pressure). I already had Discordian philosophies. I am lucky, and privelidged enough to have a level of freedom beyond what I thought I wanted... and I wouldn't give it up. But you are right. I value my own happiness above power, I'd only take the power over being happy temporarily. Poking at things behind the scenes is just as much fun, even if there is no real power in it.
This is very abstract, but more concretely, what I mean is that it helps to read about the philosophy/history of science. The canonical recommendation here is Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [1], but I also strongly recommend watching James Burke's Connections tv series [2] and then watching or reading his The Day the Universe Changed [3] to understand how our entire conception of "reality" or "truth" is so strongly determined by the technology of the time.
Finally, there are lots of "truths" in fields where this is no scientific basis to fall-back on -- politics, art, etc. For these, you have to seek out and find the best elucidators of each field (usually, but not always, books).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29
[3]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TerTgDEgUE
Sorry but the scientific community needs to address a number of points that are raised. It may be psudoscience, but there are a number of things that can't be explained by science, and in these cases, looking for answers is better than ignoring the issue. In the talk he doesn't say any of these things are true, but seems to be exploring the possibility. I am sure when it was first suggested that the earth was round, that it sounded equally ridiculous.
The TED organization decides which talks are worth "featuring". The two "banned" talks are actually far MORE prominent than all the talks they decide to simply not feature at all. TED is still hosting them, merely on a different page where they encourage discussion of the issues raised. You can easily find that page and engage the discussion there if you like.
> Sorry but the scientific community needs to address a number of points that are raised.
Does it? Says who? More to the point, does TED need to address those points, or is it okay for TED to say "no, this is just silly" until there's an actual there there in the form of, say, replicable results?
I would be careful to distinguish results that merely aren't explained by science from those that can't be. If they really can't be explained by "science", what's the point in addressing them? Why bother? That the earth was round could be explained by science. Did you mean to say instead that these points "run counter to conventional wisdom"?
If you think you have a case to make, why not just make it? What SPECIFIC "points" do you think he raises that "need to be addressed"?
Are you willing to support his views on, say, telepathy - including dog telepathy? Do you think his "ten dogmas" accurately reflect what scientific types believe? Some seemed pretty strawmannish to me. (It's easy to make yourself seem insightful if you are allowed to invent and caricature imaginary opposing views that you can then rail against.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
Computer science is lower than electrical engineering. Physics is tops.
http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-intended-colle...
http://www.joshuakennon.com/sat-scores-ranked-by-intended-co...
2. There are only at best absolute local truths i.e. truths which are truths only in a limited local subsystem of the entire possible universe. The moment you consider a larger enclosing system of which the local subsystem is only a part then the truth may cease to be.
3. One should be comfortable believing that contradicting truths can co-exist. It is the limitation of the human mind to resolve the contradictions.
Second point only highlights our limitations (due to limitations of local observational capability only) to stating those laws of nature / universal truths with enough degree of correctness so that they may really be categorised as universal truths.
Basic discordian philosophy.
There is a reality that exists. Statements are true or false to the degree that they conform or fail to conform to the reality that exists.
The problem is knowing to what degree a statement conforms to the truth of what exists...
That will help with clearing some things up.
True from false you can divine with the above, but only within the constraints of what we know and can know - this is the epistemological route.
Right from wrong is an entirely different topic, and is an ethical and moral question. A good starting point for considering the very definition of "right" and "wrong" might be to read or read about Kant, Plato, and Aristotle - but ultimately what's "right" or "wrong" derives from the very subjective societal norms of whatever cultural context you find yourself within.
There's essentially nothing which is considered universally right, or universally wrong - you get to figure this one out for yourself.
apu's recommended reading and viewings (Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", and Burke's "The Day the Universe Changed") are excellent starting points in your personal explorations into this.
Another worthwhile reading comes from Issac Asimov, "The Relativity of Wrong" (http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html ). I think he may have been an inspiration to the notion of science as an enterprise at being "less wrong", per this redacted snippet: John Campbell [Asimov's editor], who specialized in irritating me [...] told me that all theories are proven wrong in time. My answer to him was, "John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together." 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...
1. The kind that you can use to make testable predictions.
2. The kind that you can't use to make testable predictions.
Kind 1 is easy to verify. Just test the testable prediction. Done. That's really all science is.
Kind 2... people have different opinions on. Some people say that Kind 2 is useless and one should reject all of it. Some other people hold Kind 2 close to their heart and find rich meaning in it. With Kind 2, though, there's no good way to tell what's right.