> _“You cannot however use science alone to take it.”_
Challenge accepted!
> _“You must first of all decide whether wealth transfer or social intervention are things that should be done, that is, if you think it is a moral and acceptable thing.”_
**Economics**: a (social) science. It studies the allocation of scarce resources (in this case, money), and in doing so provides answers to the eternal conflict between _efficiency_ (economic growth) and _equity_ (redistribution) — which is at the root of my hypothetical scenario. Necessary here.
**Moral philosophy**: a (soft) science. The study of ethics. Definitely helpful for this example too, to help disentangle questions of “is vs ought” that Economics alone can't resolve.
**Political science** (it's in the name): concerned with systems of governance and power (redistribution is implemented within those systems).
**History**: a (soft) science studying the past, and change. Because redistribution measures have been proposed or implemented before. (How did they work, what happened?)
**Medicine** (focused on physical health) and **psychology** (because individuals react to the status quo, and to proposed policies). We're trying to optimise human well-being here, after all. **Sociology** too, because _societies_ as a whole react to the status quo and to proposed policies also.
Underpinning it all: **mathematics** (especially **statistics**). **Chaos theory** to better understand market dynamics under the proposed changes.
Throw into the mix also **computer science** (to run simulations of public policies and changes in incentives). Heck, even the systematic study of **literature** [would provide useful inputs here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cassandra_(literature)).
These are all “sciences” (admittedly, under a lax definition of “science”) — in any case, definitely closer to the realm of science than to any of the other epistemic systems we've mentioned (tradition, intuition, religion, etc).
There you are. What else do you need to work on this problem and come to a solution, other than #science?
@tripu @rastinza @ImperfectIdea History is not science. It may use empirical tools, but it's goal is not scientific. The purpose of history is to document and develop narratives of the past, specifically about human events. It does not purport to try and understand humans themselves (psychology), society as a whole (sociology), or even predict future human events (economics, political science, game theory, etc).
Sure, history can be used in scientific ways, but calling history a science dilutes the meaning of science and conflates science as the end all be all of knowledge (scientism).
@tripu @rastinza @ImperfectIdea a couple of other notes:
1) Chaos theory would not be a good tool for analysing these types of problems. Discrete simulations would be better, or even stochastic differential equations. Chaos theory deals with deterministic nonlinear differential equations with sensitive initial conditions.
2) Despite the name, computer science is not a science, and literature is most definitely not.
3) Your question "What else do you need to work on this problem and come to a solution, other than #science?" shows that you do not know the purpose of science which is to understand nature, not come up with solutions.
Honestly, this toot illustrates a native understanding of science and reeks of scientism.
> _“The purpose of science […] is to understand nature, not come up with solutions.”_
Uh?
If vaccines are not a “solution”, what is?
Does a researcher stop “doing science” the moment they complete their postdoc and focus on making a pacemaker slightly easier to maintain? Pacemakers are solutions, too. And more reliable, safer, smaller pacemakers are solutions to whatever shortcomings the previous solutions had.
Even a mathematician working on a better cake-cutting algorithm is working on a solution to something very specific and of human interest — and not so much in understanding natural phenomena.
_Of course_ #science is concerned with modifying reality (for the better!) as well as with understanding reality.
Human well-being is the ultimate magnitude of the natural world that anyone would want to optimise for, and science is the main tool we have for that.
@tripu @rastinza @ImperfectIdea
*Engineer sitting in the corner*: Am I a joke to you?
Reminded me of this joke as well:
https://www.neatorama.com/images/2008-12/mad-scientist-mad-engineers.jpg
All silliness aside, scientists can (and sometimes should) work on solutions for specific real world problems, but their work is no longer the textbook definition of science; that falls under engineering.
Your example of cake cutting problems falls under mathematical optimization, which although has a lot of real world applications, can be studied on its own.
> _“Scientists can (and sometimes should) work on solutions for specific real world problems, but their work is no longer the textbook definition of science; that falls under engineering.”_
If a physicist working on evaluating the impact of different interventions to tackle climate change, a psychologist proposing improvements to an existing type of therapy and a biologist manipulating genes to make a certain crop more nutritious are _not doing science_ according to that “textbook definition” of “science”, I'd say that definition is useless in practice.
> _“Your example of cake cutting problems falls under mathematical optimization, which although has a lot of real world applications, can be studied on its own.”_
I have the impression you are doing all kinds of contortions to avoid acknowledging the common-sense meaning of “science” that the vast majority of us have in our minds, especially when contrasted with other areas of knowledge or epistemic systems that are obviously _outside_ the purview of even the most loose concept of “science” imaginable (religion, tradition, intuition, authority, etc).
🙄
OK, you win. By exhaustion of the opponent. 😆
Please know that, from now on, wherever I use the loose word “science” I'm actually referring to “‘science’ plus ‘applications of scientific knowledge’ plus ‘engineering’”.
I don't even remind why we were splitting hairs like this.
Ah, yes. Let me rewrite once again:
> What else do you need to work on this problem and come to a solution, other than _science plus applications of scientific knowledge plus engineering_?
Coming back to my initial claim, my point is that:
* All those fields are quantitative, they rely heavily on math; and they at the very least _try_ to be evidence-based, to use reason, and to aim for objectivity.
* Wherever one draws the boundaries of “science”, all those fields are parsecs away from entirely different sets of tools that people often use for decision-making, both at the individual level and as a society (once again: religion, tradition, intuition, authority, etc).
* With the possible exception of moral philosophy, no extra ingredient is necessary, or even desirable, to improve the world or to aid in individual decision-making.
@tripu @rastinza @ImperfectIdea
According to Wikipedia ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science ):
"Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe."
For engineering ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineering ):
"Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more specialized fields of engineering, each with a more specific emphasis on particular areas of applied mathematics, applied science, and types of application."
I will admit that not all applications of science are engineering, but in general they are.
The examples you provide are applications of scientific knowledge. The physicist example falls under policy, not science (i.e., the physicist is not testing any hypothesis or expanding the field), and the psychologist example is actually closer to psychiatry (practioners of psychology, i.e., doctors).
Science has a very clear definition, and saying that its "common-sense" meaning is different is not helpful.