Engineering: We only care if it works, even if it breaks math/physics/chemistry/biology.
Theories on Theories
Submitted 11 hours ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/ae20b21a-8dc9-4810-928e-b62524539ec7.jpeg
Comments
CuriousRefugee@discuss.tchncs.de 7 hours ago
captainlezbian@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
You can bother figuring out why. Or I might be forced to in order to iterate…
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 hours ago
The failure rate falls within the tolerances
IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Physics: oh, and if you look close enough, it’s actually all probability too.
fushuan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 hours ago
Math also fails sometimes, we’ve had to invent new math along the way because math is always correct only in the given constraints of how we currently understand math. If those constraints are challenged math evolves.
Example, imaginary numbers weren’t a thing for a good while and some stuff didn’t work correctly. All math stands upon 1+1=2, we don’t know if that always holds true, for now we asume it.
Thalfon@sh.itjust.works 2 hours ago
In fact, the entire foundation of math – its system of axioms – has had to be fixed due to contradictions existing in previous iterations. The most well known perhaps being Russell’s paradox in naive set theory: “Let X be the set of all sets that do not contain themselves. Does X contain itself?”
In fact, there have been many paradoxes that had to be resolved by the set theory we use today.
for_some_delta@beehaw.org 2 hours ago
Axioms serve as a starting point.
four@lemmy.zip 9 hours ago
Economics: the law is true as long as people believe it’s true.
Kind of like fairies, when you think about it
Soup@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
Alternatively, with capitalism giving all the power to the richest: “The law is true because I’ll hurt you if you try to defend yourself and I have plenty of class traitors to help me.”
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
fucking computer science is going from on par with mathematics to worse than biology
thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
“why do you guys do it that way”
“Look because if we don’t sacrifice the goat on Thursday the code breaks, idk what to tell you”
ranzispa@mander.xyz 4 hours ago
I’m a chemist, I just gave a class to students today. The main topic of the whole lesson was this: we have all these theories and methodologies, we are not going to study how they work and how to use them, let’s discuss now all the limitations they have and when they do not work.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
Former chemistry student here. In chemistry, every single thing you ever do gets multiplied by a ridiculously big number. A few drops of water has 6.02*10^23 molecules in it. So even the tiniest chemical reactions are massive exercises in parallel processing, and measuring in human-scale units means you might miss by a few hexillion in either direction.
Isn’t it amazing internal combustion engines…ever work?
Ziglin@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Meanwhile the mathematicians who got a bit too close Philosophy are still arguing about which logic to use and if a proof by contradiction is even a proof at all.
sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
Exactly.
HERE’S A THEOREM: IF IT’S PROVEN, IT’S TRUE EVERYWHERE, FOREVER
But at the same time, even if it’s true everywhere forever, it might still not be provable, because Gödel.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 34 minutes ago
Worse: If the chosen axioms are contradictory, then the theorem is effectively worthless.
And it is impossible to know whether axioms are consistent. You can only prove that they are not.
pfried@reddthat.com 1 hour ago
But that’s math.
5715@feddit.org 11 hours ago
Social sciences: Mayhaps, but very specific
sbv@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
The author’s barely disguised
fetishpreconceived notionarrow74@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
There are 3 positions. Mayhaps, yes, and no.
Yes and no hate each other, but for some reason they hate mayhaps more
fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 hours ago
Bisexual problems.
GraniteM@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Psychology furiously staring from the corner but afraid to speak lest it be made to sit at the folding table with Astrology and Tarot readings.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 9 hours ago
They’re sharing a table with economics.
Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
Except the physicists and the chemists would both argue that everything is all about probability
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
I think chemists would use the word “averages” but basically yeah.
hansolo@lemmy.today 3 hours ago
Quantum physics: everything literally is probabilities.
arrow74@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Archaeology rifles through the pockets of other disciplines and takes what it wants
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 8 hours ago
Ontology - Fuck you, buddy
mineralfellow@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Geology: laughs in multiple working hypotheses.
fossilesque@mander.xyz 4 hours ago
They’re too busy licking rocks.
LustLive@fedinsfw.app 11 hours ago
Economics. You forgot Economics. Heres a bunch of rules.
Let’s Assume you are an Economist. Now if you first overestimate and then underestimate, on average, you are correct in your estimates, Ceteris Paribas .
for_some_delta@beehaw.org 2 hours ago
Studying Maths includes probability and statistics.
FinalRemix@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Behavior analysis: we don’t even care what species you are.
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Now. Get in the box. There are a couple of levers. You’ll figure it out. Don’t mind the cameras.
Carl@hexbear.net 7 hours ago
physics: laws, unless you look reeeeeally close, then it’s all about probability.
bedwyr@piefed.ca 10 hours ago
This guy you used for your meme is a piece of fucking shit.
5715@feddit.org 10 hours ago
Climate science: It’s political
ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca 9 hours ago
It really isn’t, but it got made to be by parties with vested interest in maintaining the oil and gas status quo.
Also, I realize this is probably a woooosh on my part.
5715@feddit.org 2 hours ago
I’m mainly talking about the endless fights at the IPCC, where every word and sentence is a debate, but yes, it really isn’t.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 6 hours ago
Biological physicists in shambles.
bomberesque@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Economics has entered the chat
Fedizen@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Aka
- Math: Here’s a dozen assumptions and how they interact
- Physics: Here’s math models we can apply to several observable groups of things.
- Chemistry: Here’s math models we can usually assume work to a lot of things, but there are so many assumptions they only actually work in very well observed conditions.
- Biology: The creatures you are studying are weaponizing your observations against you
ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Statistics is the bottom text and first picture
woodenghost@hexbear.net 6 hours ago
Math: here’s a theorem, if it’s proven, it’s true until someone finds an error in the proof or in the compiler, if it’s a computer assisted proof (and the compiler can never be proven not to be flawed - Turing) or in one of the assumptions or in their proofs or until the axiomatic system used is proven inconsistent (and it can never be proven not to be inconsistent - Goedel) or until you decide you need to work in a different systems or technically if we stay in the system, but language or culture shifts and we change what we mean by the specific words and symbols used in the theorem.
Even if it’s true, unless you’re a platonist, it’s not true in the sense that it corresponds to a factual state of affairs in the world (there are no triangles). It’s only true within the system you’re using, just like the sentence: “Sherlock Holmes lives in Baker Street” is only true in the fictional world of the novels by Arthur Conan Doyle. Or even less so, because unlike novels, math statements are tautologies, reducible to a small number of axioms or axiom schemes.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 10 hours ago
Probability: well sure, this all works under the assumption of independence, but that’s not realistic in your scenario. Have you tried reading more measure theory and stochastic differential equations?
Derpenheim@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
Physics: Every macro state of reality is a collapsed position of micro states that change because you saw them
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 11 hours ago
Economics: Our findings our just as rigorous as these other sciences we swear!
sbv@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Image
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
I once called economics a pseudoscience in a reddit comment and some libertarian-capitalist type got suuuper butthurt about it.
He said I don’t understand the word pseudoscience. I said, “no I understand it just fine. You don’t understand economics.”
His only response was to call that a “no, you” argument. Dunning-Kruger on full display.
exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 hours ago
What definition of pseudoscience would capture economics without capturing medicine, ecology, or meteorology?
Everyone’s just using models here, and the way we incorporate statistical observations to define the limits of the models’ scope, and refine the models over time, or reject the models entirely, applies to economists, meteorologists, seismologists, and many branches of actual human medicine.
Popper would define pseudoscience as predictions that can’t be falsified, but surely that can’t apply to the idea of the weatherman predicting rain and being wrong, right?
Kuhn came along and argued that science is about solving problems within paradigms, and sometimes rejecting paradigms in scientific revolutions (geocentrism vs heliocentrism, Newtonian physics versus Einstein’s relativity), but it wasn’t a particularly robust test for separating out pseudoscience.
Lakatos categorized things further at explaining how model-breaking observations could be handled within the structure of how science performs its work (limiting the scope of the model, expanding the complexity of the model to fit the new observations, proposing specific exception handlers), but also observed the difference between the hard core of a discipline, in which attempts at refutation were not tolerated, and auxiliary hypotheses where the scientists were free to test their ideas for falsifiability.
But when you use these ideas to try to understand how science works, I don’t think economics really stands out as less scientific than cancer research or climatology or other statistically driven scientific disciplines.
supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 7 hours ago
Basic foundational “observations” by Economics aren’t based on the Scientific Method.
I wish the Scientific Method didn’t have “Method” in the name because while it is a sensible name it also is misleading.
Science is method agnostic, that is a necessary and sometimes brutal aspect to scientific progress, a new promising method may uncover other methods and theories that totally pull the rug out from under old theories.
Economics, because it began and is sustained for the most part as a system of methods searching for justification for their continuation, is largely incapable of undergoing these necessary “method resets” that come periodically in any scientific discipline.
Thus no matter if locally good science is being done in economics it is undermined by the uncomfortable need to preserve the survival of the foundatinal contextualizing methods and axioms they invoke implicitly from the truth uncovered, a vice that plagues any human endeavor consciously and subconsciously and not only keeps Economics from being a real science it also largely sucks the oxygen out of the room for actually scientifically rigorous study of these phenomena.
FundMECFS@piefed.zip 5 hours ago
hahah same for psychology
ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 9 hours ago
Do they claim that though? Neo-liberal economists often adopt praxeology openly, and the other ones are mostly deluding themselves.