Path: ...!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: David Brown Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: Is Intel exceptionally unsuccessful as an architecture designer? Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2024 20:56:46 +0200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 67 Message-ID: References: <86jzf4829c.fsf@linuxsc.com> <20240925104320.00007791@yahoo.com> <40853b34aae592d6cd8a19f017e3f7eb@www.novabbs.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2024 20:56:47 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="95051d5bf11d0d231f7551bd7e6ec8f0"; logging-data="3001302"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/dWRjSYnf8CuNXYRdowDt3FKYEMKuyVLo=" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:mf9N2wFLMRtz7QcMfwR21C5T0Qk= Content-Language: en-GB In-Reply-To: <40853b34aae592d6cd8a19f017e3f7eb@www.novabbs.org> Bytes: 4871 On 01/10/2024 20:20, MitchAlsup1 wrote: > On Tue, 1 Oct 2024 15:51:36 +0000, Thomas Koenig wrote: > >> David Brown schrieb: >> >>> Science is not a religion. >>> >>> And as someone (whose name I have forgotten) once said, "Science is >>> about unanswered questions.  Religion is about unquestioned answers." >> >> That is the ideal of science - scientific hypotheses are proposed. >> They have to be falsifiable (i.e. you have to be able to do experiments >> which could, in theory, prove the hypothesis wrong).  You can never >> _prove_ a hypothesis, you can only fail to disprove it, and then it >> will gradually tend to become accepted.  In other words, you try >> to make predictions, and if those predictions fail, then the theory >> is in trouble. >> >> For example, Einstein's General Theory of Relativity was never >> proven, it was found by a very large number of experiments by a >> very large number of people that it could not be disproven, so >> people generally accept it.  But people still try to think of >> experiments which might show a deviation, and keep trying  for it. >> >> Same for quantum mechanics.  Whatever you think of it >> philosophically, it has been shown to be remarkably accurate >> at predicting actual behavior. >> >> Mathematics is not a sciene under this definition, by the way. > > Indeed, Units of forward progress in Math are done with formal > proofs. It's worth remembering that mathematical proofs always start at a base - a set of axioms. And these axioms are assumed, not proven. >> >> The main problem is with people who try to sell something as >> science which isn't, of which there are also many examples. > > The colloquial person thinks theory and conjecture are > essentially equal. As in: "I just invented this theory". > No, you just: "Invented a conjecture." you have to have > substantial evidence to go from conjecture to theory. > I think you need evidence, justification, and a good basis for proposing something before it can even be called a "conjecture" in science. You don't start off with a conjecture - you start with an idea, and have a long way to go to reach a "scientific theory", passing through "conjecture" and "hypothesis" on the way. >> "Scientific Marxism" is one such example.  It is sometimes hard >> for an outsider to differentiate between actual scientific theories >> which have been tested, and people just claiming that "the science >> says so" when they have not been applying the scientific method >> faithfully, either through ignorance or through bad intent. >> >> There is also the problem of many people not knowing statistics well >> enough and misapplying it, for example in social or medical science. > > Or politics.... Or even in hard sciences - scientists are humans too, and some of them get their statistics wildly wrong.