scientificflair | 007. [Audio/also a couple of other things.]

[AUDIO]

[More violin music over Descole's feed today; it's an incredibly simplified version of Song of the Stars - although really, someone ought to teach him the Jeopardy theme, considering how much that instrument gets whipped out when he's feeling like bombarding the network with both the fact that he can't hold all his feels, and he has something best described as "pseudo-philosophical what" to say.

As before, he plays for a while before the melody fades and shifts into something long and drawn-out, idling while he speaks; the sound is quieter, as though the violin has been directed away from the 'Gear a bit.]

There's a famous thought experiment that poses the following:

Imagine yourself standing outside a large field; you see, in the distance, what looks to you to be a specific animal - for simplicity's sake, let's say a bull. You then form the belief that there is a bull in the field. And you are correct - there is, indeed, a bull in the field. However, the bull is lying down behind a hill, just outside your line of vision; you can't see it from your current position. Moreover, what you actually saw was a tarp that had gotten tangled over a bush; from outside the field, it looked like a bull, but actually wasn't anything of the sort.

Again, you were factually correct, and you had a well-justified true belief that there was a bull in the field. However, can you really say you knew?

[He pauses for a moment, continuing to play quietly while he thinks.]

And if you were to find yourself in such a situation - where a belief is true and well-justified, and yet the proof of it being true isn't where you believe it is - would you say that your belief was any less valid?

[And with that, the feed cuts off.]

[PRIVATE TEXT TO FLUTTERSHY]

Miss Fluttershy,

I have something to ask you, should it not be an inconvenience.

[PRIVATE TEXT TO COLONEL ARCHER]

There's something that we need to discuss.

Now.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I suppose I might find myself asking why it matters if I "knew", really. If my belief caused me to reach a conclusion, and that conclusion was ultimately factually true, isn't that somewhat analogous to "the ends justify the means"? Perhaps the factually true result justifies the belief, regardless of its mistaken premise.

[...you. He likes you. That violin is still going to be playing a bit, but he's considering what's being said, at least.]

I'm rather inclined to agree with you, actually; at the same time, while I do admit that not all thought experiments have a practical application and to attempt to ascribe them one can defeat the purpose, in several cases the way a conclusion came about can be more than a bit vital to people considering the validity of the conclusion itself.

[This is a guy who legitimately believed winning a junior varsity regional tennis championship would mean his captain's lifesaving surgery would be successful. MISTAKEN PREMISES EVERYWHERE, BATMAN.]

That's true. I might answer differently if the circumstances of the hypothetical were something a bit more consequential than the presence of a bull in a field. But that still comes back to the same question — is it ultimately the fact that matters, or is it how I came to reach it?

For centuries men believed the sun revolved around the earth. They formed conclusions based on this premise. Eventually, they came to accept that in fact the earth revolved around the sun, because it explained those same conclusions, plus others that the previous model couldn't. But are the conclusions explained by a flawed model any less true than the ones ultimately explained by an accurate one? That depends on if your concern is really with the conclusion, or if it's actually with the model.

[...that is the sort of special that demands headpats and a brownie, holy shit.]

Again, that's all true in theory. At the same time, would you use the flawed model to explain your conclusion in any sort of formal setting? It doesn't render the conclusion any less true, no, but context is unarguably vital, particularly in a matter like what you've described regarding scientific fact.

[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.

007. [Audio/also a couple of other things.]

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