Re: The insult of disbelief
Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2011 11:14 am
The ground is not solid.
Excellent example.
The ground really is NOT solid, as you all know. Most times we don't even think about this fact. The ground is nothing but piles of particulate and get something heavy enough and it will part for it like water. Not even those individual particles are "solid".
But what counts here, and what i think works as an excellent concept to extend to scientific confidence is that while the ground is not actually "solid", for all our purposes it might as well be. Nobody will just fall through a wall, even though it is primarily empty space. So while a completely accurate understanding of the structures that underlie the macro world tells us things are not as they appear, we can still use our more or less accurate understanding of the circumstances, and reliably use those approximate, though demonstrably incomplete, understandings to predict how our actions will have consequences with certainties that approach 100% to such a degree that the chances against are so minuscule as to be ignored except under the most extreme circumstances.
Excellent example.
The ground really is NOT solid, as you all know. Most times we don't even think about this fact. The ground is nothing but piles of particulate and get something heavy enough and it will part for it like water. Not even those individual particles are "solid".
But what counts here, and what i think works as an excellent concept to extend to scientific confidence is that while the ground is not actually "solid", for all our purposes it might as well be. Nobody will just fall through a wall, even though it is primarily empty space. So while a completely accurate understanding of the structures that underlie the macro world tells us things are not as they appear, we can still use our more or less accurate understanding of the circumstances, and reliably use those approximate, though demonstrably incomplete, understandings to predict how our actions will have consequences with certainties that approach 100% to such a degree that the chances against are so minuscule as to be ignored except under the most extreme circumstances.