
Albert Einstein’s Sci-Fi Stories (2015) - Hooke
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/albert-einsteins-sci-fi-stories
======
Jun8
“New Theory of the Universe,” a headline in the London Times crowed.
“Newtonian Ideas Overthrown.” For a introductory but fascinating treatment of
why this is wrong you should read Asimov's _The Relativity of Wrong_
([https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht...](https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm))
In fact, this should be required reading for science journalists, which, by
the looks of the current writing, is not the case.

Sad to read that the Nobel committee was so influenced by Henri Bergson's
baseless objections. As a layman in both physics and philosophy here's my
take: Philosophers play a crucial function in all science but especially in
physics, which purpots to explain reality in bizarre terms. It's when they go
beyond interpreting and assisting to _actually predicting_ is when things go
wrong.

For a well-known example of this consider Hegel's "proof" in his dissertation
that there cannot be more than seven planets, based on idealistic analysis of
gaps between planets (to be fair, in his later work he has said he no longer
holds many views expressed in the dissertation).

For a discussion on why Hegel thought so see:
[http://hegel.net/werkstatt/english/hegel_and_the_planets.htm](http://hegel.net/werkstatt/english/hegel_and_the_planets.htm).
For a more in-depth discussion see this article:
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2251262.pdf?seq=1#page_scan...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2251262.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

Note that the article fails to mention that rising antisemitism in continental
Europe just when evidence for relativity started to come in also played an
important role ([https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/why-didnt-
einst...](https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/why-didnt-einstein-win-
a-second-nobel-prize-for-relativity)), this would have been an interesting
point, given the discussions being held in the US today.

~~~
throwaway13337
> It's when they go beyond interpreting and assisting to actually predicting
> is when things go wrong.

It seems like another way of stating that is that philosophy is useful up
until it gets into the realm of falsifiable and then is falsified.

It makes me question, then, a lot of the usefulness of modern philosophy.

I'd say philosophy that is useful must show some _provable_ improvement into a
way of life - that could be a model that can make a person more
happy/productive/whatever but the explanatory power of modern philosophy is
bunk.

~~~
bb88
Physics takes what we know and extrapolates to what we don't. Logical
conclusions based upon what we know, and what we assume must be the case.

The best philosophy seeks to do the same thing, and present logical arguments
proving or disproving something. Each argument is ideally falsifiable, and
like physics, any unknown knowledge is recognized.

And much of physics which though must have been the case has been proved wrong
too. I'm looking at you, "Luminiferous Ether".

Particularly fascinating to me was the arguments of AI, and whether
consciousness can really be achieved by a computer. I would start with
Searle's Chinese Room:
[https://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/](https://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/)

~~~
new_guy
Searle's Chinese Room is really bad to give as a starting point for someone,
it's basically just a homunculus.

~~~
jerf
The idea would be to grapple with the question, not just accept someone's
answer, even if you agree with it in the end.

Scott Aaronson has what is in my opinion so far the definitive take on the
subject in
[https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf](https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf)
, section 4. It's not just a homunculus, it's an exponentially large one that
can't fit into the universe as we know it. While that doesn't necessarily
completely destroy the thought experiment, it does, I think, rather color the
discussion, vs. the mental image of some small space we'd normally call a
"room".

------
olooney
Bergson is pure woo: Nothing but completely subjective, baseless,
pseudoscientific nonsense. Here is a sample of how he wrote:

"The intellect always behaves as if it were fascinated by the contemplation of
inert matter. It is life looking outward, putting itself outside itself,
adopting the ways of unorganized nature in principle, in order to direct them
in fact." \- Henri Bergson

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future.
In truth, all sensation is already memory." \- Henri Bergson

"Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later
give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through
social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start
looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them
a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of
awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of
following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance." \-
Henri Bergson

And here are a few of the more pointed things Bertrand Russell had to say
about him (from History of Western Philosophy[1], page 791):

"One of the bad effects of an anti-intellectual philosophy, such as that of
Bergson, is that it thrives upon the errors and confusions of the intellect.
Hence it is led to prefer bad thinking to good, to declare every momentary
difficulty insoluble, and to regard every foolish mistake as revealing the
bankruptcy of intellect and the triumph of intuition. There are in Bergson's
works many allusions to mathematics and science, and to a careless reader
these allusions may seem to strengthen his philosophy greatly. As regards
science, especially biology and physiology, I am not competent to criticize
his interpretations. But as regards mathematics, he has deliberately preferred
traditional errors in interpretation to the more modern views which have
prevailed among mathematicians for the last eighty years." -Bertrand Russell

"In that case, he may be tempted to ask whether there are any reasons for
accepting such a restless view of the world. And if he asks this question, he
will find, if I am not mistaken, that there is no reason whatever for
accepting this view, either in the universe or in the writings of M. Bergson.
" -Bertrand Russell

Why would anyone think he was qualified to discuss physics? Bergson wrote a
book called "Matter and Memory"[2] and his thesis, Time and Free Will[3],
where he presented a highly subjective and basically meaningless account of
"time." Like others have said, it's sad that his pseudo-intellectual rock
throwing was taken seriously. Einstein himself credits Hume and Mach[4] with
helping him get past the notion of absolute simultaneity.

[1]: [http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF](http://www.ntslibrary.com/PDF)
Books/History of Western Philosophy.pdf

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_and_Memory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matter_and_Memory)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_Free_Will](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_and_Free_Will)

[4]:
[https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/HumeMach.pdf](https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/HumeMach.pdf)

~~~
ErotemeObelus
That was a strawman Peeping Tom Bertrand Russell constructed. Henri Bergson
based a large portion of his work drawing the distinction between functioning
on representation versus functioning on cognition.

representation = passive; science isn't assertive. Science is purely passive
which is why scientists can never assert something is true but only that it
hasn't been disproven. A scientist can say "this is what general relativity
says, this is how general relativity maps onto the bending of light, apply it
to your work or not. Take it or leave it."

scientism = passive-aggressive; it is assertive by asserting "no metaphysical
woo" passively using representations provided by science. They're like the
coworker who passively expresses how he feels about his boss by little
gestures.

cognition (what Bergson called intuition) = assertive; it reaches knowledge of
truth which is why it can definitely assert something is true. But it isn't
forceful so it can't convince other people which is why it only reaches up to
your being.

~~~
gjm11
Anyone or anything _can_ definitely assert something is true. Here, I'll do it
with a scientific proposition: "Humans definitely evolved from non-human
apes."

One thing that distinguishes science from many other modes of thinking is that
scientists have learned that things that seem definitely true sometimes turn
out not to be, which is why carefully expressed scientific judgements don't go
quite so far as I just did. "Our current best explanations for the way the
world is have humans evolving from non-human apes, and it currently seems
incredibly unlikely that any theory that doesn't have that feature will work
out better than those do."

If you come to some intuitive judgement, you may "definitely assert" that it's
true. If so, that isn't because intuition has some power to "reach knowledge
of truth" that's denied to science. It's because, in the grip of that
intuitive conviction, you aren't thinking as careful as scientists-at-their-
most-careful do.

~~~
ErotemeObelus
> Anyone or anything can definitely assert something is true.

No they can't because sophonts aren't voluntarists. Sophonts are
intellectualists. Although judging by your advocacy of the otaku theory of
biology you probably have a voluntarist personality.

By the good regulator theorem, human cognition (intuition is bergson's word
not mine) must be just as good as scientists-at-their-most-careful or I and
you would be dead.

~~~
gjm11
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense.

1\. It doesn't matter whether "sophonts" (whatever exactly you mean by that)
are voluntarists. It might matter whether voluntarism is _right_ , which is an
entirely different question, but I don't think it's credible that even _that_
is relevant here. Why should anything so broad as voluntarism be necessary for
anyone to be able to "definitely assert" that something is true? (Note that I
didn't claim, e.g., that anyone at all can sincerely assert that anything at
all is true.)

2\. "The otaku theory of biology"? Are you just trolling?

3\. "Voluntarist personality" doesn't make any sense. Voluntarism is a
philosophical position, not a personality trait. If you mean that I'm the kind
of person who believes whatever they feel like, well, please go ahead and
believe that if you feel like doing so.

4\. There is no theorem that would make us dead if human cognition weren't as
good as scientists-at-their-most-careful, and if you think Conant and Ashby
proved anything of the sort then I think you are badly deluded. What might be
true (though actually I don't believe any theorem comes close to proving this
either) is that if human cognition weren't _perfect_ then we would be
_mortal_. Guess what? It isn't, and we are.

~~~
ErotemeObelus
Look,

Reflect on this: there are at least 200 factual errors on the front page
comment sections of Hacker News. Do you nod along while you read it being
entertained, or do you pinpoint the errors?

I'm not even talking about nigling details. I saw one comment about relativity
with a huge scientific howler right in the middle of it. And people upvoted it
sky high.

The people who upvoted it were being passive. The users of this site receive a
passive experience and generally speaking are too childish to handle asserting
their own mind. Even comments are largely passive. People don't even reflect
on the subject-verb agreement of the sentences that they write. They are so
childish that asserting themselves by the tiniest amount on their writing is
not trivial nor has it reached the point of automaticity.

How does science work? It's largely like reading Hacker News. Scientists
download research papers, understand them, and test them... and occasionally
come up with new directions and ways (equiv 2 commenting on the newslink).

None of that are assertive. When an assertive person presents himself on a
subject, he causes a PARADIGM SHIFT. He doesn't go along with the
presuppositions: he creates his own presuppositions. This is Thomas Kuhn's
"groundbreaking" thesis on scientific progress: some people internalize other
people's presuppositions until they are fossilized in their brains resulting
in them kicking and screaming on their death bed when it's time to admit it
was a bad idea... or some people are like creative genius Thomas Hobbes who
said he didn't bother reading all the failures before him because he was too
busy thinking his own presuppositions.

~~~
gjm11
You seem to be arguing different things in every comment.

As I understand it, your thesis now is that most scientists most of the time
accept things they hear from other scientists. That's probably true. And it's
part of how science works -- which it does, rather impressively on the whole.
But the paradigm-shifting stuff is _also part of science_ , and a vital part
at that, so if this is meant to connect somehow to your earlier remarks about
science being passive, "scientism" being passive-aggressive, and "intuition"
being assertive, you have more work to do to justify that connection.

(And, once again, if you want to claim some sort of superiority for
"intuition", you need to show not only that intuition _purports_ to assert
things more definitely than science does, but also that it does so
_correctly_. Mere overconfidence is not an intellectual virtue.)

Thomas Hobbes was a smart guy. But when he tried to do science and
mathematics, the results were _not good_. The most infamous example: He
thought he'd accomplished the so-called squaring of the circle and duplication
of the cube. He hadn't. (They are impossible.) So far as I can tell, none of
Hobbes's scientific work turned out to have any lasting value.

