tripu @tripu@qoto.org

@rastinza

> _“Religion provides clear answers to the questions ‘why are we here’, ‘what is the purpose of life’ and so on”_

Sure. But it's not about providing answers; it's about providing _good_ answers. My 2-year-old can provide a clear answer to the thorniest of questions, too.

I sense you're stuck in binary thinking: either a theory is absolutely comprehensive, or it fails; either an epistemic system can answer any conceivable question, or it doesn't work as stated. I'm more interested in what works best.

Yes, you can reject any axiom, define “works best” to mean anything, and even deny that there could be a way to know what “works best”. But then you're trapped in an epistemic void of nihilism.

Almost everything we use for decision-making would fail at the quantum level, near a black hole, or when the Big Crunch is nigh. Again, I'm happy to rephrase my claim to restrict it to a human-scale scope. As I said, that's still an awful lot of areas that are commonly assigned to the realm of intuition, opinion, the ineffable, or the subjective — and I maintain they're not.

@rastinza

> _“You can use all the measurements you like, but you won't get a scientific answer.”_

I think science is the best tool we have to get closer to know whether the question is valid in the first place, and if so to learn the answer. There have been astonishing discoveries and progress, and it's continuing.

How are evolution by natural selection, the Big Bang, multiverses, computation, quantum physics, black holes, chemistry, mathematics, space probes, genetic engineering, etc _not_ getting us closer to the mystery? Project that trend one millennium (or a billion years) into the future, and tell me that math in particular, and science in general, are not helping us, by far more than anything else we have, in answering that question (and _any_ question).

@rastinza

> _“One edge case is enough to falsify a whole theory.”_

I'm happy for my claim that “math is everywhere and numbers are useful to us humans in all domains of life” to be limited by the Uncertainty Principle. There's still an awful lot of useful applications outside of that. After all, when was the last time you felt the UP was constraining your options in life?

> _“Making predictions does not equate to explaining something: neural networks for example make very good predictions about stuff, however provide no explanation.”_

Agreed. Still, science and math do tend to make predictions _and_ explain far more than anything else we know. Even when science or engineering can't “explain” but just “predict accurately”, they're terribly useful, and better than anything else. Don't you agree?

> _“You cannot consider religion and tradition as alternatives to science since these do not work in the same field.
How can you evaluate which works better if they provide answers to different questions?”_

What questions do religion or tradition answer better than science?

> _“The scientific method is based on several axioms, thus one might simply disregard it completely if he disagrees with one of those.”_

Agreed. But that's true of _any_ epistemic system. That's not a weakness of science. (And I would claim that science needs fewer and simpler axioms than, say, Christianity.)

🇪🇸 #Spain #university #education #gender #feminism

Sources: _Ministerio de Universidades_ ([1](https://public.tableau.com/views/Academica20_EEU/InfografiaEEU?%3AshowVizHome=no&%3Aembed=true#7); [2](https://www.universidades.gob.es/stfls/universidades/Estadisticas/ficheros/DyC_2021_22.pdf))

@rastinza

I think you only need a few axioms, eg “suffering is bad”. There doesn't need be a big apparatus of ideology.

Your example is simple: losing friends is trivially easy; making and maintaining friendship is costly and for some people may be difficult. Your hermit who has “too many friends” can “solve” the situation in a day or two, alienating or ignoring people as needed. The opposite is not true.

Also: necessarily, when we approximate the ingredients of well-being, there'll be outliers and exceptions. That's to be expected, and doesn't mean numbers don't work.

You can always refine the model, and measure instead no. of friends _in relation to desired no. of friends_: 1 means perfect; anything above or below is worse.

Ultimately, everything is quantifiable.

@rastinza

> Position and momentum of an electron

Yes, I think you hit on a valid edge case: singularities (in the physics sense). At quantum level and black hole level my claim might well fail 😅

> [Science] cannot answer the question "is science a good way to explain the world?"

Yes, it can. Put science to compete against alternatives (intuition, religion, tradition, randomness, etc) to make predictions about a specific phenomenon. See which does better. Rinse and repeat. Science comes ahead in the aggregate.

@rastinza

> What is the meaning of life

It's debatable that this question is even sensical. “Life” could very well have no “meaning”. This question could be as absurd as “what do screwdrivers desire?”

If we accepted the question is valid: my claim is not that we can answer any question with a single figure. Rather that numbers can and should be used to describe everything and inform all our decisions.

About the big questions or life: whatever (concrete) doubts we have, numerical data comes to our rescue: should I have kids? Should I work harder? Should I vote yes on this referendum? Should I meditate? There are studies or surveys or cost-benefit analyses or diminishing returns or cutoffs or optimums for all that.

@rastinza

> Whose life is better

There are entire fields of research devoted to improving (and so, necessarily, also _measuring_) quality of life, aka well-being: within medicine, psychiatry, sociology, philosophy.

There are metrics (longevity, physical health, mental health, suffering, pain, stress, purchase power, crime rate, democratic quality, self-reported happiness), units to measure it all (years, QALYs, BMI, USD, % of disability), and ways to combine it all into a single measure.

I'm not saying there is one single perfect metric or that we have found the ultimate way to measure well-being. But it's definitely measurable, and we're getting better at it.

Whoever measures higher has “a better life”.

@rastinza What isn't?

**_Everything_ is quantifiable, and should be quantified.**

Everything is a #measure or can be measured.

#Science can study anything, and #mathematics is the language of science.

The fact that some aspects of life seem hard to estimate doesn't mean we are better off not even trying and coming up with our best approximation.

More #information rarely hurts, and even rough approximations (accompanied by their respective confidence intervals) are useful information.

One can measure, weigh and analyse… and still be sensitive, funny, romantic, impressionable, intuitive, creative — if one so chooses after all the (numeric) information is available.

> _“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”_

(living thread)

@koalie

@gasull

😆

OK, then…

@gasull

Since when are plant-based diets and CBDCs mainstream? Less than ~10 people in my entire social circle have adopted the former, and afaik zero have ever touched the latter.

How are Tesla or being fit counterculture? Tesla vehicles are known and desired universally and I see more and more every day on the street, and most of the people I know either are fit or are clearly trying to be fit.

@pablobm

Are you a fan of anthroposophy, man?

https://guzey.com/books/why-we-sleep/