Hi rdf,
I'm very sorry that you don't think my posts are good enough for your demanding mind, but who cares?
This is an opinion thread, remember?
And good manners might even push you not to systematically shove your truth in the reader's face all around, don't you?
However, there is no "fight" for me.
I frequent forums not exactly to make friends, but to hopefully compare my opinions with those of others without the typical conditioning inherent in so-called real life.
For me it is a purely intellectual and not personal comparison of ideas, and that's it.
Besides, I don't know anyone here.
So, if my posts are too poor for you, don't reply to me.
For symmetry I would like to add (no offence intended) that I've never read in your posts the fruit coming from a superior mind.
However, just for the record, I'm not a musician even if I strum the classical guitar, I am not an electrical engineer, I am not a sound engineer/technician, I am not a designer, I am not a technician, I am not a salesman, I am "just" a lover of music first and foremost and also of its good reproduction and I have never worked in the audio sector, but in healthcare settings.
I'm a Medical Information Scientist from more than 25 years and I'm responsible for illustrating and coordinating scientific studies in the pharmaceutical field together with the medical class of specialists of various specializations, in particular in the field of respiratory pathologies and their related therapies.
Since, as said, for me it is a forum's discussion of opinions on a purely intellectual and non-personal level, I've never liked declaring my age (and frankly not even my degree and profession before), neither in the past nor now.
Having said that, what changes in my right (if any) to express my opinion on a forum without the risk of being mocked by a superior mind?
A superior mind (if any) is self-explanatory and would certainly be polite, don't you?
However, in my opinion, being an electrical engineer or a designer does not necessarily mean being "interesting".
I know very "dumb" engineers, if you know what I mean.
It surprises me that an objectivist (if any) allows himself to be influenced by knowing in advance what his interlocutor's job and degree are.
I automatically wonder how much his beliefs are (if even they are) ever questioned.
So as trapped in the well regulated and scientific medical industry, you are venting your "free and explorative" side of your mind here? ;-D
//
//
Shining example of a "superior" mind attempting to mock its interlocutor to gain a position of "prominence" or to put him in an "inferiority" position.
Do it in real life if you can, instead.
The Lounge readers are smarter than your estimates make them out to be.
You are trapped, not me.
Billshurv wrote,
An argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam, is a form of defeasible[1] argument in which a claimed authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion. It is well known as a fallacy, though some consider that it is used in a cogent form when all sides of a discussion agree on the reliability of the authority in the given context.[2][3] Other authors consider it a fallacy in general to cite an authority on the discussed topic as the primary means of supporting an argument.[4]
Education levels, age, experience, the blissful state of not being gullible, they are all logical fallacies. However, if you showed your PhD friend what some audiophiles are doing these days and he laughed so hard milk squirted out of his nose we might consider that as real evidence.
Portray science not as an open-ended process of discovery but as a pre-emptive holy war against invading hordes of quackery-spouting infidels. By every indirect means at your disposal imply that science is powerless to police itself against fraud and misperception, and that only self-appointed vigilantism can save it from itself. 😛
An argument from authority (argumentum ab auctoritate), also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam, is a form of defeasible[1] argument in which a claimed authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion. It is well known as a fallacy, though some consider that it is used in a cogent form when all sides of a discussion agree on the reliability of the authority in the given context.[2][3] Other authors consider it a fallacy in general to cite an authority on the discussed topic as the primary means of supporting an argument.[4]
Education levels, age, experience, the blissful state of not being gullible, they are all logical fallacies. However, if you showed your PhD friend what some audiophiles are doing these days and he laughed so hard milk squirted out of his nose we might consider that as real evidence.
Portray science not as an open-ended process of discovery but as a pre-emptive holy war against invading hordes of quackery-spouting infidels. By every indirect means at your disposal imply that science is powerless to police itself against fraud and misperception, and that only self-appointed vigilantism can save it from itself. 😛
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
https://skepticalaboutskeptics.org/examining-skeptics/daniel-drasin-zen-and-the-art-of-debunkery/
Plagiarius also referred to a literary thief—and that sense was lifted into the English language in the word plagiary, which can be used for one who commits literary theft (now usually referred to as a plagiarist) or the act or product of such theft (now, more commonly, plagiarism).
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiary#:~:text=Plagiarius also referred to a,, more commonly, plagiarism).
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Markw4 - Excellent example of not seeing the forest for the trees.😎 The format police are on the case.
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If we can get a little more back on topic:
Concepts such as, people are either objectivists or subjectivists, or that some observation is either objective or subjective, are examples of the logic of bivalence.
However, there can also be multivalent logic.
More on the subject at:
https://blog.cabreraresearch.org/logic#:~:text=That's not to say that,has more than two outcomes.
---------------------------------------------
Moving along, there is the 'verify-ability principle,' which might be described as follows:
Verifiability principle, a philosophical doctrine fundamental to the school of Logical Positivism holding that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable or else tautological (i.e., such that its truth arises entirely from the meanings of its terms).
https://www.britannica.com/topic/verifiability-principle
Which then brings us to 'logical positivism'
Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement whose central thesis is the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning).[1] This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism#Decline_and_legacy
My comment: Not sure if its clear to everyone how the above subjects relate to some of the discussion in this thread. If it will help to clarify further, another quote:
One day I learned that science was not true. I do not recall the day but I recall the moment. The God of the twentieth century was no longer God.
There was a mistake and everyone in science seemed to make it. They said that all things were true or false. They were not always sure which things were true and which were false. But they were sure that all the things were either true or false. They could say whether grass is green or whether atoms vibrate or whether the number of lakes in Maine is an even or odd number. The truth of these claims had the same truth as claims about math or logic. They were true all or none, white or black, 1 or 0.
In fact, they were matters of degree. All facts were matters of degree. The facts were always fuzzy or vague or inexact to some degree. Only math was black and white and it was just an artificial system of rules and symbols. Science treated the gray or fuzzy facts as if they were the black-white facts of math. Yet no one had put forth a single fact about the world that was 100% true or 100% false. They just said they all were.
Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko:
https://www.amazon.com/Fuzzy-Thinki...7kSQERJaTDUz_-mQzMd7YBTCwas7QT2kaAsylEALw_wcB
Concepts such as, people are either objectivists or subjectivists, or that some observation is either objective or subjective, are examples of the logic of bivalence.
However, there can also be multivalent logic.
More on the subject at:
https://blog.cabreraresearch.org/logic#:~:text=That's not to say that,has more than two outcomes.
---------------------------------------------
Moving along, there is the 'verify-ability principle,' which might be described as follows:
Verifiability principle, a philosophical doctrine fundamental to the school of Logical Positivism holding that a statement is meaningful only if it is either empirically verifiable or else tautological (i.e., such that its truth arises entirely from the meanings of its terms).
https://www.britannica.com/topic/verifiability-principle
Which then brings us to 'logical positivism'
Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement whose central thesis is the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning).[1] This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism#Decline_and_legacy
My comment: Not sure if its clear to everyone how the above subjects relate to some of the discussion in this thread. If it will help to clarify further, another quote:
One day I learned that science was not true. I do not recall the day but I recall the moment. The God of the twentieth century was no longer God.
There was a mistake and everyone in science seemed to make it. They said that all things were true or false. They were not always sure which things were true and which were false. But they were sure that all the things were either true or false. They could say whether grass is green or whether atoms vibrate or whether the number of lakes in Maine is an even or odd number. The truth of these claims had the same truth as claims about math or logic. They were true all or none, white or black, 1 or 0.
In fact, they were matters of degree. All facts were matters of degree. The facts were always fuzzy or vague or inexact to some degree. Only math was black and white and it was just an artificial system of rules and symbols. Science treated the gray or fuzzy facts as if they were the black-white facts of math. Yet no one had put forth a single fact about the world that was 100% true or 100% false. They just said they all were.
Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko:
https://www.amazon.com/Fuzzy-Thinki...7kSQERJaTDUz_-mQzMd7YBTCwas7QT2kaAsylEALw_wcB
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You've clearly been hiding under a rock. Trolls stopped using this to score points about 15 years ago.
How dare you assume birth gender or preferred pronouns. Anyway they all have expensive hobbies/obsessions so would see themselves in the mirror.
He (in this case he is a he) would indeed, though it would not be milk. Otherwise, your post is a case of "I definitely don't want what he is having"... 😀
The scientists of 1950s science fiction were fiction. Scientists are fully human and still buffeted by status, wealth, recognition, comfort, safety and the need to eat. Processes evolved to constrain and minimize these influences but those too are vulnerable to human needs. It's not inviolable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
This discussion advances as if past abuses of scientific credentials never happened, for example the tobacco lobby. Or for a lighter hearted view of where our contemporary objective science is headed:
https://www.science.org/content/art...study-reflects-sudden-appearance-culture-wars
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0309132515623368
Who knew satellite geographic imagery is pornographic.
Fuzzy theory is wrong, wrong, and pernicious. What we need is more logical thinking, not less. The danger of fuzzy logic is that it will encourage the sort of imprecise thinking that has brought us so much trouble. Fuzzy logic is the cocaine of science.
--Professor William Kahan, University of California at Berkeley
--Fuzzy Thinking, Bart Kosko
What is important to realize is that Professor Türkşen's work abandons bivalence and embraces partiality of truth, along with partiality of possibility, likelihood and most other concepts. There is a profound implication of abandonment of bivalence which is widely unrecognized. More specifically, the implication is that in order to come to grips with the issue of growing complexity, we may have to legitimize the status of conclusions which may have the form of fuzzy theorems, that is, theorems which are partially true. We may be compelled to do this because of what I had called the Principle of Incompatibility—a principle which suggests that high complexity of the kind that we observe in the realm of economic systems, is incompatible with high precision. What this implies is that in the case of systems of high complexity, precise conclusions are likely to have low relevance. Given the deep-seated tradition of quest of precision, this contention may be a bitter pill to swallow.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/mathematics/bivalence
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I'm siding with gpauk. I've met a small number of serious scientists and they seem to be impossible of giving a binary answer to anything and start most sentances with 'it depends'. Doesn't affect the precision of their work, just their interpretation. After all the michelson morley experiment has been runnning since the 1880s in various forms.
The thinking has changed somewhat over the years, especially since acceptance of fuzzy thinking has grown.
However, look at a science textbook from before the advent of Fuzzy Logic. Things are what they are, or else they aren't.
Taxonomy and classification are all about bivalent logic.
Even today, look at the arguments here about what is objective versus subjective. Its 'one or the other' type thinking.
Anyway, scientists say 'it depends' because either it depends or it doesn't. Happens to be that it does depend in some cases.
IOW, bivalence is so baked into our thinking that we don't even see it where it exists.
However, look at a science textbook from before the advent of Fuzzy Logic. Things are what they are, or else they aren't.
Taxonomy and classification are all about bivalent logic.
Even today, look at the arguments here about what is objective versus subjective. Its 'one or the other' type thinking.
Anyway, scientists say 'it depends' because either it depends or it doesn't. Happens to be that it does depend in some cases.
IOW, bivalence is so baked into our thinking that we don't even see it where it exists.
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what level of science textbook? I have maths textbooks that say the square root of -1 is impossible, which is a simplification until you hit a level where the teacher says 'ok we lied' and teaches you complex numbers.
Also can I confirm what you mean by fuzzy logic? To me that is something from the early 90s that gets used in rice cookers and vehicle cruise controls. You seem to be describing a different use of fuzzy
Also can I confirm what you mean by fuzzy logic? To me that is something from the early 90s that gets used in rice cookers and vehicle cruise controls. You seem to be describing a different use of fuzzy
Math is different from physical science. Math is a set of logical rules and symbols. The problem is when we try to describe the physical world as though it is exactly as precise and well defined as the mathematical models.
Fuzzy Thinking is more of general a philosophical recognition that reality is not so cut and dried as binary math.
Fuzzy logic has been used effectively for some purposes. There are scalability/dimensionality problems with its practical use when systems get too complex.
Fuzzy Thinking is more of general a philosophical recognition that reality is not so cut and dried as binary math.
Fuzzy logic has been used effectively for some purposes. There are scalability/dimensionality problems with its practical use when systems get too complex.
ok so you were talking about fuzzy thinking (sounds like me on a friday morning before my second cup of tea) not fuzzy logic in an engineering context?
Still confused who things serious scientists ever thought it was cut and dried (at least since Lord Kelvin's time)
Still confused who things serious scientists ever thought it was cut and dried (at least since Lord Kelvin's time)
Scientists didn't necessarily say things are simple, but they often did say things like we do know this, we don't know that. They didn't usually say we maybe know 40% about some particular thing. Some of them could have sometimes, but in an argument usually the verify-abilty principle and bivalence would win (e.g. "you have insufficient proof of that" or "a lion is not a tiger" type of thinking).
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I've clearly met different sorts of scientists to you. The ones I have known would say 'we have insufficent proof, but a billion dollars will help us build a machine' Knowing full well that the first paper after the machine was run would end with 'we now need to build a bigger machine'.
Fuzzy logic is not a new concept. I studied it in university more than 25 years ago now.
Fuzzy logic is a technique used for reasoning about imprecise information, it is not implying that anything is wrong about first order and second order, “binary”, logic.
Now, if it can also be used to say “why can’t we all get along!?”, it is certainly the best technique ever.
This thread is just another instance of a topic in the same class as politics, religion and philosophy.
The strongest science to explain the positions of each actor is certainly psychology.
And “cognitive dissonance” is the definite principle at the root of strongest beliefs.
All in all, as I said early on, we can swing opinions back and forth and never change anyone’s mind, once buying decisions and experiences have established certain beliefs.
To keep an open mind is an uphill task for human beings.
I thank all participants for keeping the discourse civil, even when progress seems impossible.
Fuzzy logic is a technique used for reasoning about imprecise information, it is not implying that anything is wrong about first order and second order, “binary”, logic.
Now, if it can also be used to say “why can’t we all get along!?”, it is certainly the best technique ever.
This thread is just another instance of a topic in the same class as politics, religion and philosophy.
The strongest science to explain the positions of each actor is certainly psychology.
And “cognitive dissonance” is the definite principle at the root of strongest beliefs.
All in all, as I said early on, we can swing opinions back and forth and never change anyone’s mind, once buying decisions and experiences have established certain beliefs.
To keep an open mind is an uphill task for human beings.
I thank all participants for keeping the discourse civil, even when progress seems impossible.
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