[extropy-chat] Science and Fools (was: unidirectional thrust)

[Hal Finney]

Robin Hanson wrote:

> At 10:54 PM 3/15/2005, Hal Finney wrote:
> >Essentially I am advocating the idea of following the scientific
> >consensus faithfully; you might even say, blindly.  ... Delegating these
> >matters to any outside social institution, even one whose track record in
> >approaching the truth is greater than anything mankind has ever developed, ...
>
> It seems to me that your arguments there would have the same force if you just
> used the phrase "intellectual consensus" and dropped adding "science" modifiers.
> The specific mechanism you praise is criticism, but this is mostly just what
> happens to intellectual experts in general.

I don't necessarily think that good use of criticism is the only thing
that makes science work.  I don't actually know why science works as well
as it does.  But its track record is clearly very strong.  Science makes
progress.  The scientific picture today is far more accurate than that of
100 years ago, which itself was far better than the one 100 years earlier.

As far as "intellectual consensus" vs "science", what is the difference?
What would be examples of communities where we could identify an
intellectual consensus, but they would not be considered scientific?

Well, one obvious possibility is mathematics.  That is not technically
a branch of science, but they do make similar progress.  Major puzzles
of the past, such as the four color theorem or Fermat's last theorem,
are now solved.  So this would be a good example of another area where
I would agree that we should respect the intellectual consensus.

Another possibility is Christian religion.  There is an intellectual
community of Christians, but I don't know if I would defer to their
expertise.  Have they made progress?  Is the intellectual understanding
of Christianity today significantly better than that 100 years ago?
I'm doubtful, but it's not an area I know much about.

The bottom line is that I would judge whether another (non "scientific")
intellectual community deserves respect based on whether it is making
visible progress, from my layman's perspective.  This may not be a perfect
rule; it may exclude some communities which deserve respect, but it looks
to me to be a reasonable guideline.  And my rule has plenty of bite,
even if it is limited.  There are elements of scientific consensus which
all of us have problems with.  Figuring out how to deal with those is
a hard problem.  Later we can decide how much we can expand the rule to
other intellectual communities.

> Now perhaps in some areas criticism is stronger than in others.  It is not
> at all clear that this would be due to differing social institutions, rather
> than to other differing factors.  But regardless of the exact reason for the
> difference, should one prefer experts from the stronger-criticism 
> areas?  You said:
>
> >the minute you start deciding for yourself which scientists
> >should be counted in the consensus and which shouldn't, you're making
> >your own judgements.
>
> Now isn't preferring high-criticism experts just another way to decide which
> experts should be counted?   If the experts in some area think they do just
> find with less criticism, why should you think they are wrong?

I was addressing the temptation to pick and choose based on emotional
like or dislike of the scientific consensus.  We don't like the idea
that humans cause global warming, so we think science must be wrong.
We like evolution, so we think science must be right.  We don't like
the idea that cryonics won't work, so we think science must be wrong.

It would probably be a mistake to try to judge which scientific fields
are most amenable to criticism, and to decide which ones to believe on
that basis.  It's difficult for an outsider to observe this objectively.
The only people in a position to know would be the scientists involved,
and even then they would have a hard time comparing the situation in
their field with those in other scientific areas.  And it's possible
that criticism isn't really the reason for scientific success.  But that
doesn't change the fact that science is genuinely successful.

Hal