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From: The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Joy of this, Joy of that
Date: Mon, 9 Dec 2024 11:54:56 +0000
Organization: A little, after lunch
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On 08/12/2024 20:49, D wrote:
> 
> 
> On Sun, 8 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> 
>> On 08/12/2024 05:31, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>> On 12/7/24 6:59 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>>> On 06/12/2024 17:12, D wrote:
>>>>> If you postulate something which can never be known, it is kind of 
>>>>> useless. It goes the same way as god, or a postulated first mover etc.
>>>>
>>>> And yet that is what people do all the time. In fact it is the 
>>>> necessary foundation of thinking.
>>>>
>>>> All metaphysics - and we all use it, whether we understand that we 
>>>> do or not -  is to assume the framework for our understanding, and 
>>>> use it not because it is demonstrably true, but because it *works* 
>>>> for us.
>>>>
>>>> We don't  and can't *know* that time and space exist - at least in 
>>>> the way we understand them, but they do *work* for us, the way we 
>>>> understand them.
>>>
>>>    Careful ... the "luminiferous aether" WORKED - at least
>>>    with the existing physics  :-)
>>>
>> Exactly. That was Karl Poppers point. We don't discover the  laws, we 
>> actually make them up, and if they work, we use them.
> 
> If you are interested, Bas van Fraassen probably has some interesting 
> things to add as well. There was also a german guy who wrote something 
> interesting in the 1920s I think on that theme, but for the moment the 
> name does not come back to me.
> 

> Ahh, here we go!
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophy_of_%27As_if%27 .
> 
Yes. That is exactly what I meant.

Except more so, He argues that if it works, even if its wrong, its OK.

My point goes further. We can never know for sure if its *right* so the 
*only* criteria we can have is that it works.

Which was where Karl Popper came in. He arrived at that point and wanted 
to clarify what separated good science from bullshit.

And pseudo scientists have been trying to shout him down ever since



-- 
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They 
always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them"

Margaret Thatcher