Comment on "Belief in Science" Oxymoronic Explainer for SecOps/Mathematicians/Programmers

• orclev@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Belief is just what you personally think is true, there is no universal concept of true, even things that the majority of people believe to be true are not necessarily universally agreed upon. Even something as basic as 1 + 1 == 2 might not be believed by some people. There is no accepted universal arbiter of truth. When people say they believe in science they mean that they recognize the scientific process as the best way we have found to determine what is true in our reality.

  Take as an example that the Earth is an approximate sphere. Most people agree that this is true and therefore believe this. But there also exist people who do not believe this, that argue it is not true. They do not believe it. What is true is not agreed upon. These people have a fundamentally different perception of reality. Those that believe in science trust in the systems and methods of the scientific process and therefore when such systems tell us that the Earth is in fact a slightly flattened spheroid we accept that as a truth. That is what it means to believe in science.

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  • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Even something as basic as 1 + 1 == 2 might not be believed by some people.

    There are plenty of cases where 1 + 1 == 0 , it’s not about just some people.

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• Sentrovasi@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We can take your axiom, 1+1 = 2, and break it down into where fundamentally one of your biggest misunderstandings is.

  We came up with the equivalence of 1+1=2, and deemed it true. Someone else in this comment section already brought up the idea of axioms, and while 1+1=2 is a theorem rather than an axiom, it is built on axioms that have been defined as fact for the rest of the framework to stand.

  Science (and Math) is a purely anthropic system or framework. 1+1=2 isn't a universal constant if we look at the fusion of two Hydrogen atoms into one Helium atom (with extra energy being released!) The very idea of what 1 is can change depending on your reference point and may not stay the same between observers. While 1+1 may stay the same in the world of pure Mathematics (and a very robust world it is we have created!) it is much harder to apply them to real life (does this make Mathematics "true-er" than reality?)

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  • elias_griffin@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The comments are full of drivel, but I’ll pick this one to respond to as you sound educated and able to re-formulate concepts but lack open-mindedness and novel application of concepts. Plus, your response is full of institutional verbage, first level thinking, shallow understanding, which sounds great to the uneducated and low IS posters, but doesn’t even pass the first test so it easy to disassemble.

    1 + 1 = 2 isn’t an axiom, it’s math, equality, and true. This is exactly what the perspective point I was trying to make! Truth itself cannot be axiomatic! This is so self-evident it is hard to comprehend how your education can lead you to one of the largest fundamental misunderstands in Science, but I guess that is not surprising. I mean, your post is a testament to misunderstanding reality, an reference to be studied in the future of post-Idiocracy. It in fact provides a broader understanding of post comments, Lemmy, and social media in general.

    My definition as I understood it before looking it up is an axiom is a logical statement true on it’s face that serves as foundation for another step. Let us look at the some definitions for Axiom.

    Tutors An axiom is a basic statement assumed to be true and requiring no proof of its truthfulness. It is a fundamental underpinning for a set of logical statements. Not everything counts as an axiom. It must be simple, make a useful statement about an undefined term, evidently true with a minimum of thought, and contribute to an axiomatic system (not be a random construct).

    Mathigon One interesting question is where to start from. How do you prove the first theorem, if you don’t know anything yet? Unfortunately you can’t prove something using nothing. You need at least a few building blocks to start with, and these are called Axioms.

    Wikipedia An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word ἀξίωμα (axíōma), meaning ‘that which is thought worthy or fit’ or ‘that which commends itself as evident’.[1][2]

    Wolfram An axiom is a proposition regarded as self-evidently true without proof. The word “axiom” is a slightly archaic synonym for postulate. Compare conjecture or hypothesis, both of which connote apparently true but not self-evident statements.

    You may use first level thinking about Propositions so to avoid more non-sense here is an another explainer.

    University of Idaho

    Harvard

    Let me hammer it home again, the principle of my argument, to give you repeated attempts to understand and forego your ego 1 + 1 = 2 cannot be a proposition, an axiom, and proof, a logical statement that evaluates to true, it is already true and by definitions above it is:

    • Defined
    • Does not serve to prove a logical statement
    • Does not serve as further reasoning.

    Saying 1 + 1 = 2 serves as foundation for something else is like saying my car accelerates because of motion or momentum which is generic, imprecise, not a proof, and worthless. Movement is already motion. Your car accelerates because of a gas engine. Again, please think deeply about this, no shallow thoughts. What I’m trying to do is go beyond and surpass common knowledge, to push the envelope further than before using the scientific method to challenge old constructs.

    I would challenge any Mathematician anywhere and I meant to. 1 + 1 = 2 is what is, a truth, true, fundamental building block of all things and requires no reasoning. If a toddler picks up another stick, it knows it has two whether it can convey that thought-form in a way we understand it or not. Saying 1 + 1 = 2 is Axiomatic is like saying Oxygen is an axiom or axiomatic. To further build the periodic table. No, Oxygen just is, a fundamental piece of reality which is also true! Maybe someone will understand in the future.

    My aim was to put this comment up for posterity as wasting more time here is fruitless so don’t take it personally really, I just used your most educated and almost right post as an example of how that if intellectual debate is to be sought, it certainly isn’t on Lemmy which is I would say mediocre at best, and in fact, one is surely to get misinformed, ugly responses.

    I will use all the debate that went on in my head in trying to combat this circus into a proper Academia.edu Paper. Really, my whole point was the second part of my post where I thought it was quite clear the logical conclusion to which would be that programming lanaguages need to be re-engineered! No one even put that together that I saw!

    I skipped all the mean comments.

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    • Sentrovasi@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It's unfortunate that you've chosen to focus on a semantic nitpick as the only thing to reply to rather than all the other more interesting talking points.

      It's also unfortunate that you've chosen to condescend throughout all the posts you've written, which really makes me want to not rely to you.

      That said, you've already shown a brutal contradiction:

      Wikipedia:
      'to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments'

      Tutors:
      'contribute to an axiomatic system'

      Wolfram:
      'a proposition regarded as self-evidently true without proof. The word “axiom” is a slightly archaic synonym for postulate.'

      What these definitions all say that I think you're wilfully choosing to ignore (or just not reading carefully enough) is that these are all assumptions meant to make a system internally logical.

      It's also amazing how you can say

      'Saying 1 + 1 = 2 serves as foundation for further deductive reasoning [...] is generic, imprecise, and worthless'

      when that is literally what half of your definitions also say.

      'Saying 1 + 1 = 2 is Axiomatic is like saying Oxygen is an axiom or axiomatic. To further build the periodic table. No, Oxygen just is, a fundamental piece of reality which is also true!'

      You're still not getting it, which means you're not reading anything I've said at all about human-centric perception (which is a shame given how much time I've had to spend trying to parse your poor semantics.)

      There's a difference between the element and atoms of Oxygen that do exist in our world and the name and observed properties of Oxygen that we have derived and given to Oxygen. The strange thing is that I think while everyone else agrees that the testing, observing, and ascribing of properties to something is science, you think that the existence of oxygen itself is science (and therefore science is truth?)

      Fundamentally your dogmatic clinging to axioms as somehow underpinning some universal truth when they are meant to be convenient frameworks to build upon shows a very shallow understanding of the building blocks with which humans have built our understanding of the world. I highly recommend you take the scientific method to heart and try posting these "deep" thoughts in other places to see if anyone else agrees that they're deep. If they don't, I invite you to revise your hypothesis and reassess whether what's "true" to you really is true to the mathematicians and scientists of the world.

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