usedlaserbeam: (SPECULATE Φ might've left the gas on)
Yagyuu Hiroshi ([personal profile] usedlaserbeam) wrote in [personal profile] scientificflair 2012-12-08 11:41 pm (UTC)

audio;

[Thank you but he would really prefer the gold medal and avoidance of TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF SHAME, all things considered.]

So, to use the bull example again — in a formal setting, I say, "there is a bull in that field." When asked to explain how I arrived at that conclusion, I would answer, "because I saw a bull in it." If we later investigated, we'd discover that there was indeed a bull there, rendering my conclusion true, but that what I had seen was a tarp, rendering my explanation false.

Diagrammed out that way, I can't see how I could use anything other than the flawed model, really — since I don't know it's flawed until we investigate, and I have no reason to believe that what I saw wasn't a bull. And while the outcome of it might be that I would have reason to question my bull-spotting skills in the future, that's a different consideration than whether or not there really was a bull there in the first place.

I hope you'll pardon my attempt at laying things out in this way; it's undeniably a complicated problem, and I admit I'm attempting to work through my own conclusions even as we discuss them.

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