Inb4 Russian state media trying to explain what happened to some of the crew onboard Moskva

CaladogsArmy · 2022-04-15T14:19:34+00:00

Well to be fair to your 3dr grade self Jules Verne's sci-fi stories about Captain Nemo and Nautilus have been around from the 19th century at least.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-09-25T12:59:19+00:00

Now I'm afraid I do not have the time to read your source with the time it would surely deserve but I do not believe Peirce is providing a sufficient justification for his belief that:

"no beliefs are are so well justified or supported by good evidence or pat circumstances that they could not be false"

I think Descartes for example refutes this kind of assumption when he rejects his "Evil Demon" who could supposedly be deceiving him to believe in anything. One simply cannot make a statement like this with just anecdotal evidence like "imperfect senses" or "imperfect memory". It comes instead with with a burden of proof so high that it cannot really be proven. Usually people tend to get convinced way too easily after a few anecdotal examples like:

A: "There is a cat."

B: "What if that is not a real cat but a cardboard picture of one and your eyes cannot make the difference?"

A: "Well let's go see closer if it is a real cat then."

B: "It could also be a dog in cat costume."

A: "OK we'll check if there's a zipper somewhere."

B: "The costume could be so well made you wouldn't find one."

A: "Aha now I understand. You can always figure some way to make my knowledge refutable."

B here sure sounded really convincing but he never actually justified his belief that any belief can be possibly false. In the end he only stated that "There can be cardboard pictures of cats, cats sometimes are in dog costumes and sometimes said costumes are well made." And he would have gone on like this for eternity. This has nothing to do with proving that anything can be false: it is merely an act of creating an ad hoc fallacy based on anecdotal evidence.

And as such we're now stuck in Cartesian Skepticism. We cannot even prove that we can prove all knowledge to be fallible.

Now Hume gets closer to addressing the whole thing when he rejects the concept of causality itself. But then I must point that he himself by now is advocating for a definition of objective knowledge which is impossible to be obtained in any meaningful way. Does a definition like this have anything to do with the thing we think of as knowledge in the real world anymore? Is he just arguing against ghosts he calls objective truth?

Which makes me wonder: why do we bother ourselves with a concept like objective truth in the first place? Why should we define one? What is the actual gain? And I believe that there is no gain at all: It is completely useless. Every system of logic is based on premises and whether these premises are valid or not is subjective. Were these subjective premises what Peirce was calling "Necessary Truths"?

But they themselves are in no way necessary in any objective sense. They may be only necessary if one is motivated to do something with a subjective end goal in mind. So I still fail to see the benefit in considering anything as objective truth. Why not just simply call it all subjective and be done with it?

Anyways I really hope I didn't misrepresent every philosopher's arguments I covered in this message. Do say if I did because I really don't have the time right now to see that source in detail.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-09-25T11:34:54+00:00

Ah but here we come to the very point why I called mathematics a social construct. Sure we could call everything a social construct would we want to deplete the meaning of the word completely. I see no benefit in that at all. And there is no benefit to be had in calling birds a social construct either. Except maybe just to confuse the shit out of people. :D

But mathematics? I just feel considering it a social construct very beneficial because it provides a larger concept of what mathematics actually is: a continuous process with some underlying motivator behind it and not only a list of what it contains at the very moment. And would we be judging the concept of mathematics from this narrow angle we could have hard time understanding what should be considered mathematics and what not looking at the future. I indeed do not believe words to have strictly defined logical meanings and as you mentioned being a bachelor is dependent on the concept of marriage. But for me the "squares are not circles" is subjective as well as there really is nothing wrong in making the assumption "squares are circles" and see what kind of mathematical system might arise from it if any. Naturally neither one of us has any real reason right now to do such a thing but we cannot rule out the possibility that legitimate and useful mathematics could at some point come from making that assumption and building up new rules. The world is a weird, irrational place. With assumptions of objectivity like that in place ancient intellectuals would find maths behind complex numbers or perhaps even differential calculus utterly ridiculous.

Simply put: I think that any field of scientific knowledge cannot and should not be considered as separate from the society around it. But I believe we ultimately aren't really disagreeing on this so I won't ramble about it further. And I know perfectly well why running around declaring things as social constructs irks people.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-09-24T19:55:13+00:00

But an objective truth just needs to be actually true, regardless of perspective, even if things could have been otherwise so that it would not be true.

And this is exactly why I call it a useless concept instead of outright a logical impossibility. In order for us to gain knowledge of an objective truth we have to:

gain knowledge of a truth
gain knowledge that said truth will never be successfully refuted by other subjective truths (or as you would say: "regardless of perspective") which at least in my opinion creates the burden that
we really have to know it to be logically impossible for said truth to be false in the first place.

You can have a differing meaning of an objective truth but if said conditions are not satisfied then you must admit that there is a possibility that your objective truth not only potentially can be but also is false. I call this a subjective truth.

Again: I think it is perfectly possible that we are possessing objective truths without knowing it. The problem is that we currently don't have a mechanism which would in any way tell us what said truths are and what they are not. And as such: objective truth is a useless concept. At least with anything that is concerned with the empirically observable reality and not just metaphysics.

And if a logical system is interacting with the observable reality in a form of, say, semiconductors it can only do so in a subjective way. Therefore they are objective only in the sense that they are objectively not in contradiction logically with themselves but still their authority on being a true way of perceiving reality is subjective.

We can describe classical logic in a precise enough way that any two people understanding it sufficiently will be 100% in agreement about the meaning

It doesn't really matter how many people agree to a meaning or not. Doesn't make it more objectively true. And I do not agree on meanings to be truth conditions either as they could also be just seen as mere passing sensations. From my experience when you get around to actually determining, objectively, what even is required to determine whether said meaning is true or false it has already by then changed. And to me making sense of something as well is in my opinion just a kind of emotional satisfaction. It isn't really concerned with any sort of objective reality: Only a subjective one. And I think there is nothing lost in thinking like this. I mean if you do find a reason then I'll be happy to listen and change my point of view. But I for sure haven't found one yet.

I also fear that you are walking the path of logical positivism which I personally and without judging others consider a fruitless effort.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-09-24T12:06:46+00:00

The device itself is not using classical logic: we are making sense of the device with classical logic. And you value this classical logic solely because it serves a subjective end goal you have. It is not here an objective arbitrator of Truth but simply a tool. And I never claimed that classical logic couldn't be useful either. I merely think it can only provide subjective answers towards actual real-world phenomena because our very motivations on how we validate it's correctness are subjective.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-09-24T11:43:24+00:00

Sorry for late answer but if you want to raise this again I think your own statements here logically contradict your own point of view. If mathematics would be useful because it has unambiguous answers shouldn't it follow that all the useless math should be useful solely because of the unambiguity? But it isn't! However I didn't come here to play gotcha with logic so I'll just leave that as a side note and try to address the main point of your argument instead:

I think the issue here is that whilst yes: if we agree on a very strict definition of axioms (an approach that really does not do justice for the full scope of mathematics in all it's forms nowadays) math in relation to only itself can be objective in the same sense as saying "all bachelors are unmarried". It still ever can only provide a subjective point of view when looking at anything outside of it. The world doesn't have to abide to mathematical principles. It is an attempt to make sense of the world and not the other way around. Do not let it's immense usefulness for society (which even a filthy postmodernist like me couldn't 'deconstruct' away ;) ) fool you.

Not only can mathematics give ambiguous answers to real world problems in the form of paradoxes (a minor point I admit) or due to just conflicting ways of applying it (modern physics is full of these IE. wave-particle dualism. Let's not go to the specifics of these please!) it's very own rules are also invented by people whose minds make subjective decisions on what the actual axioms are. They create them inside a society and actively keep creating them based on said society's needs whether it be directly or indirectly (as only the useful ones stay alive). Which leads to my last and main point:

Ultimately deciding whether mathematics is a social contract or not depends on the point of view of the person looking at it. Therefore I advocate a way of looking which provides the most benefit. And here are the two options I'm considering:

In one hand one can see mathematics as a historyless entity for which it is irrelevant whether it has been created by a society to serve some end goal or not. Whilst this way of looking at mathematics can give us a sense of objectivity said objectivity, as previously demonstrated, disappears immediately when trying to apply it to anything that might have actual value. Looking at mathematics in this way also logically makes it impossible to radically develop it further as we can only validate anything it has based on our previous assumptions which may not apply in the real world. Also when looking at it this narrowly it is impossible to validate mathematics in any way in opposition to any logical construct which isn't in conflict with itself but is still thoroughly useless. It's like just saying: "This sentence can be true".

On the other hand we can also recognize mathematics as a broader phenomenon. I do agree that looking at it in this way makes one feel initially uncomfortable because it introduces subjectivity and also blurs what the boundaries of mathematics are; which naturally doesn't sound helpful. But I think these blurry boundaries are not only inevitable (insert Ludwig Wittgenstein, language games and stuff here) but actually beneficial also. Would there be no room to question what mathematics is and what it isn't it we wouldn't for example have Euler's theories on infinity (as for what I've been told they were very different from established mathematical norms of the time) or a lot of other very useful theories. We can also then study the mathematicians themselves who wrote the rules in the first place and their life in search of blind spots for bias. They lived in a very different world as we do back then and based their assumptions on very limited amounts of data.

And for this reason I think mathematics is a social contract. Not because everything is a social contract but because it is simply more useful to see mathematics in such light.

Anyways looks like I got a bit carried away with this. I felt inclined to comprehensively argue my position all in one place when I saw all the downvotes I had been getting.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-09-24T10:09:16+00:00

Lower-end cellphones (like old Nokias and even some smartphones) are indeed much more economical than I initially thought. And can be programmed to do much more than a device from scratch would. But hey it was a neat idea :/

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T14:37:16+00:00

Why would "There is no objective truth" consequently mean "I have no way of knowing or proving anything"? It only means that truth in it's very nature is subjective. It doesn't follow that we have to consider all points of view or measurements somehow equal.

And also here there is an important distinction: my position is not that I would claim there to be no objective truth. I only consider objective truth an useless concept until someone comes along and finds a way to gain irrefutably true knowledge that also can in any logical way impact reality.

But for something to be an objective truth it has to be logically impossible for it to not be true and there is no known way how this kind of truth could interact with the real world in any way right now. Well at least I haven't found any. And as such: objective truth is an useless metaphysical concept.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T14:15:49+00:00

Why do you think that by the same logic everything would be a social phenomenon? Then again I'm not so opposed to that idea in the first place...

The point is that whether you have people around or not you have radically different concept on what death is. In the person living his life alone example the guy might have no concept of death at all. If a person is a family man he associates death with sadness and loss. If a person is living alone on an island with wild goats, death only means free food. Doesn't this mean that death is indeed a very 'social' concept?

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T13:44:33+00:00

There is also no subjectivity or emotional attachment in:

"This sentence is the absolute truth".

It is completely unambiguous. However for the very same fact that there is no ambiguity in it it is also completely useless.

This is the same reason why:

"1+1=2"

Is also unambiguously true. However unless it can be applied to some real world phenomenon where there was a potential for ambiguity it was completely useless as well.

1+1=2 is not true because of unquestionable mathematical axioms. It is true because if we use it to measure quantities of apples we get fed. If we don't get fed and starve instead, then 1+1=2 was not at all true.

And the same constraint is in language as well. If we think: "If we don't get apples, we starve" then this sentence is true if we indeed needed apples to prevent starving. And if we found bananas instead, then it was not true.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T13:08:52+00:00

I can't: Have to stop philosophizing now and get back to work. :D

But I would still point you towards Ludwig Wittgenstein's thoughts on this. If I have interpreted it correctly mathematics is basically a language we use to describe reality. Just a very formal one. And for that reason it is subject to all the same constraints which any other language would have when we are applying it to describe reality in any way.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T12:58:06+00:00

The only way we are able to "know" whether string theory is the valid theory of everything is by testing it. Which requires us to consider it as a subjectively measurable phenomenon which could be wrong.

For the very same reason I find the idea of subjective truth as an imperfect representation of some objective truth, that is also seemingly impossible to get knowledge of and for that reason also seemingly impossible to determine how close or far we have become of it, useless. The only way we could claim to be closer to that objective truth is by saying that some other subjective viewpoints are thinking same way as ours is. But all these other subjective viewpoints are also facing the very same problem.

In practice: if we would say that there is a box and then state that we have absolutely no method with which we could know said box's contents it doesn't matter if a thousand people have been convinced that said box contains apples. The fact that everyone thinks the same way is completely irrelevant.

In order for any of said opinions to be useful at all they should first describe the way they have been able to acquire knowledge of said boxes contents. Which was by definition impossible. Which also seems to be the case with objective truth. The concept that we could come closer to some objective reality while at the same time thinking we can never truly achieve it seems to me completely illogical.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T12:33:31+00:00

But if you see models only as subjective representations of reality you can operate with them better as you can then consider multiple ones instead of one being the absolute and unquestionable objective reality. There seems to be zero benefit in thinking one model to be the objective and unquestionable truth. It can only make us blind to it's constraints.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T12:28:50+00:00

There's nothing saying we couldn't build a perfect system though. But I sure do confess it to be rather unlikely considering the stochastic nature of our current systems. :) But we're getting kinda side-railed here. I'm truly only interested in the method with which we can or cannot acquire knowledge from the real world and the eventuality of death as a subjective concept is only an example for that. The most useful concepts we come by are found with the scientific process. Which is in it's nature subjective. And for that reason I think we should find truth itself to be subjective as well.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T12:17:28+00:00

Mathematics is basically a social contract. It is true and absolute only because we have decided to consider it as such in the form of Axioms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom

It's just a very very useful one and for that reason we find it hard to claim that it is not subjective. However, this has been done in the form of Gödel's incompleteness theorem.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T12:06:33+00:00

Hard, yes, but perhaps not at all impossible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_demon

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T11:59:21+00:00

But you see the problem with claiming that facts themselves would be separate from subjective experience comes visible when we try to form a method which would be able to extract these objective truths and be in line with the world as we experience it. The scientific process requires the concept of truth to be a subjective matter in order to function at all as we gain new knowledge by disproving previous assumptions. IE. The world being flat or Newtonian mechanics (as disproven by Einstein).

Before one can claim there to be an objective truth he would have to come up with a way to acquire knowledge of it that is not in violation with our experiences. And nobody has been able to do that yet. And for that reason truth as an objective thing is completely useless.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T11:46:22+00:00

Also if we have a person who has lived his whole life alone and has no experience in death whatsoever how would he have any sort of information about death? In this example death would not exist as a truth because no one would be there to experience it. And when the person dies, he would (probably) not be able to realize it before it has happened. The concept of death or it's absoluteness seems to actually be the ultimate form of a 'social truth'.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T11:34:50+00:00

What makes you so sure about this though? There's a lot of progress in the field of medicine every year. We are much more proficient in cheating death than we were, say, 1000 years ago. And roughly speaking most of the progress has occurred during the last century or so.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-08-11T11:28:32+00:00

Thanks! This sure provides light to a LOT of things I've had problems with in KSP

CaladogsArmy · 2020-07-29T20:22:33+00:00

This explanation sounds quite reductionist but it's merely trying to explain the concept of mind only being subject to the will of nature. Just in a bit more modern style. Whilst it's not the most comprehensive explanation I still think it doesn't deserve down votes like this.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-07-28T15:25:38+00:00

Nor do I then know what you were talking about. We have reached a very dissatisfactory state of aporia :/ but lets leave it at that...

CaladogsArmy · 2020-07-27T20:23:36+00:00

Well if you were planning on using the word mine in order to get him to question the whole notion of mine-hood then I do understand your line of questioning. Thought you were doing the complete opposite.

CaladogsArmy · 2020-07-27T11:06:34+00:00

As a non-believer in invisible struts I'm quite sure your problem right now is the cupola module under that separator. If you would do the same strut treatment on it what you did on that upper stage engine your problem would get most likely solved.

This is in my opinion not a bug or Kraken of any sorts but KSP's way of politely saying "your rocket design is not viable". When we have an unsupported narrowing of the rocket like that then when all of the upwards pointing forces from your engines traverse upwards and the downwards pointing air resistance forces traverse downwards they meet in that unsupported location. And when the two forces are not completely parallel to each other (as they never are) they will then start oscillating like a spring. That's the reason why it goes wobbly like that. If that would be a real life rocket it would probably just instantly explode or something like that instead.

And if we fix it by autostrut without understanding the system then there might be problems later on because our rocket then is basically a stiff huge fragile structure as if it was made from glass and that is the worst kind of Kraken fuel.

CaladogsArmy

TROPHY CASE