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Comment by pureGuano | Hacker News Reader

One good heuristic to use when evaluating scientific research is the Lindy Effect. Essentially, the longer a finding has stood without being falsified, the longer you can expect it to continue to stand without falsification.

This runs contrary to what I was taught in high school science classes, which was that newer science is more reliable than older science. The truth is that the old stuff that still stands is really where it's at. Most "novel" scientific findings are not true. A smaller portion will be thought true for a while, then discarded. Only a very small amount of research will stand for a long period of time.

Another thing to consider is that the scientific method and its modern, institutionalized implementation is not very old at all. You cannot exclude the possibility that some of our fundamental scientific understanding is totally flawed, and we've yet to discover how.

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> You cannot exclude the possibility that some of our fundamental scientific understanding is totally flawed, and we've yet to discover how.

Much of modern technology is built on modern scientific findings. Since that technology unarguably works, the findings on which it is based cannot be "totally flawed".

This is wrong in a few levels. Much of modern technology is built on modern scientific findings but few modern scientific findings have technologies built on them. There are entire fields, such as social sciences, which couldn't really be said to have any technology based on them. More importantly though, technology working isn't the same as an experiment, fire worked as a technology well before we truly understood underlying physics.

I agree that soft sciences are much more likely to be seriously flawed.

That said, working technology absolutely is experimental validation of the underlying science on which it is based (if any).

It's very tricky to pinpoint what "the underlying science is." For example my phone is a piece of technology, you could argue it provides experimental evidence for any number of scientific theories. However, the hallmark of an experiment is that it can fail and in so doing disprove your theory. Can my phone fail? It can certainly fail as a phone and most phones do eventually fail for some reason or another. Does that mean that the experiment has failed and the underlying scientific theories need to be thrown out? Probably not, because it's failing as a phone, not as an experiment. What failure means when you try to consider your phone as an experiment is very unclear to me and without a clear failure case that would invalidate the theory it's useless as an experiment.

Transistors (semiconductors) work because of quantum mechanics. If it didn't work the way we expect, the CPU would be a useless piece of rock.

The GPS receiver only works properly because we understand and account for general relativity.

The radio relies on a lot of stuff related to information theory. Which might be science, depending on how you think of applied math.

The screen and battery are built on a lot of materials science, which I don't know much of anything about.

What failure means when you try to consider your phone as an experiment is very unclear to me

A phone is far to complex and intertwingled to be a proper experiment; if it works it proves a lot of things, but because of that if it doesn't work it doesn't disprove much of anything.

If the phone works, it says "all of these things are true", which is a lot of information.

If the phone doesn't work, it says "at least one of these things is not true", which is correspondingly less information.

Those things are tied together. Someone who knows more about statistics and information theory could probably explain how a lot better than I can.

Orbits of planets were calculated long before General Relativity. I believe we put a man on the moon using newtonian physics. Many types of medicine is successful without us knowing exactly why.

Just because technology that is built on top of science works doesn't mean that it is 100% correct. It isn't that our theories are outright wrong, but they probably still are incomplete or are only approximations.

"Orbits of planets were calculated long before General Relativity"

Interesting you would say that. They were calculated and the orbit of Mercury was not predicted correctly according to Newtonian Physics. Using Einstein's general relativity, the calculations matched observations.

They matched the observation that were available at the time really well. Even pre-Gallilean models matched the observations of their time.

"It works" isn't necessarily a great barometer for truth even for direct applications of theories. Ptolemaic astronomical models actually worked pretty darn well, even though they were based on a geocentric universe.

Nah.

If any phone ever works, it means that some of the underlying theories might be true. Any specific phone means nothing. And a phone that isn't working has absolutely nothing to do with any proof.

Implementations of objects that rely on theories are emphatically not proofs of them. And failed implementations of those objects are not disproof.

>fire worked as a technology well before we truly understood underlying physics.

Just following the analogy; what science was fire validating during that time? Just because something works doesn't mean it wasn't created by trial and error.

In regards to your last paragraph, I'd like to mention that we made use of electricity while still having erroneous ideas about the electron. We even made use of it before the electron was theorized.

I'd also like to mention that I am a scientist, albeit retired. I'm wrong more times, by 09:00, than most people are all day. I have no reason to believe we are at some sort of apex of knowledge.

The other day, they released findings that showed they can mathematically predict quantum chaos. I'm still pondering the implications. There is so much we don't know, and that's a great thing.

To me, this is the difference between a "good enough" theory vs. a "totally flawed" theory. Obviously, there's a gray area between the two, but I think the distinction is valid. We had a working model of electricity that was good enough for some initial applications. Contrast with, say, Lysenkoism in Russia, which was totally flawed.

BTW, I never said we were at an apex of knowledge. I'm trying to quell the concern that what little we do know is somehow going to turn to mud one day. That's very unlikely.

Off topic, but mind linking the paper you mention?

Start here:

https://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-have-managed-to-fit...

I'm going to give it a serious investigation over the winter. I don't have the time to devote to it until then.

It can work, but for reasons different to our positive scientific understanding, no?

No. The odds of, say, the GPS in your mobile phone working by accident are effectively zero.

It's not that it would work by accident, it would be more like it works by a principle to which our physics is a good enough approximation.

Yes, but then our physics wouldn't be "totally flawed". It would just be incomplete in some ways.

How large is the preimage of conclusions that would lead to the mathematics of relativity? Is it improbable in light of that?

I should also say that physics has a better track record than softer sciences. But even in physics, things change.

There's no member of that preimage in which modern science is totally flawed.

Yet we're posting in a thread relating to a massive replication crisis.

The geocentric model of the universe was equally obvious and functional to our ancestors in the context in which they used it. We are the same creatures as them and are subject to the same basic epistemological limitations -- just because we have seen further does not mean that we have seen everything. The whole concept of science is exactly to that point. It is implausible under currently available information that we could be missing some fact that would fundamentally change our understanding, but that is not the same thing as saying that there is no possible fact that could cause such a rupture.

I guess it just depends on the definition of "totally." It is very much possible to develop something based on the insights from Newtonian physics for example. Newtonian physics is flawed, but often good enough.

Right. Newtonian physics is an example of a good enough theory. Although it's been proven "wrong", it's still taught in schools and will suffice to get a rocket from Florida to Mare Tranquillitatis. No mean feat.

>which was that newer science is more reliable than older science.

who taught that? I notice a lot of people seem to think this is true. Seems obviously crazy to me! People sure aren't any smarter now.

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