> _“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”_
(living thread)
**_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.
@tripu
Go tell this to anti realists.
Surely measuring things often improves information and knowledge, but that doesn't mean everything is quantifiable.
@rastinza What isn't?
@tripu
Whose life is better, what is the meaning of life, position and momentum of an electron
Science can study some things, to some others it can offer no response; for example it cannot answer the question "is science a good way to explain the world?"
> 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.
@tripu
The question is sensed and the answer might be that life has no meaning, however science cannot provide this answer. You can use all the measurements you like, but you won't get a scientific answer.
Surely numbers can help you, but there's no way that science is giving you an answer.
The 'correctness' of a choice cannot be measured.
You'll be the one deciding what you want to do.
Even if there was a model measuring the goodness of a choice, that would still be arbitrary since it would depend on a number of assumptions made while making it.
@tripu
No, science will never provide that answer.
@ImperfectIdea
There is no way to demonstrate that, is there?
Does it really matter anyways?
I'm just stating that science provides no answer to this question, while other disciplines do.
@tripu
@ImperfectIdea
I don't feel like discussing this just to talk about an unrelated topic.
@tripu
@rastinza you used the question "what's the meaning of life" as an example of something that can't be measured. I said it is an invalid logical question, therefore an invalid argument, unless you define your terms. I wasn't trying to move to the topic of the meaning of life (since I don't agree it's a valid logical question).
@tripu
@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).