
The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - dedalus
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
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grigjd3
This is something that getting into analysis courses and finding your way into
higher level physics and chemistry classes drives home. It's perfectly valid
to use a scientific theory that has been shown to be incorrect on some scale -
so long as you are not in that scale. Yes, relativity is a better
understanding of gravity than Newton's inverse square law, but it's still
pretty valid for me to take the acceleration due to gravity as 9.8
meters/second^2 (which is an even lower level approximation) because I live on
the surface of the Earth. If I am designing cars, or roads, or buildings, or
(most) airplanes, or sewer systems, this is a pretty good assumption. Having
been trained as a physicist, there is nothing the community would love more
than results which show we need to develop new theories - mostly because that
means more work for physicists. At any rate, I love Asimov's writing.

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samirillian
Serious philosophers of science (a la Popper and Poincare) had a succinct term
for more-or-less right: verisimilitude.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verisimilitude)

I always enjoy finding the right word for summing up a heretofore real but
fuzzy concept.

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jbpetersen
I enjoy it as well. Having various precisely descriptive words does a lot to
help my thoughts flow nicely. Thanks for adding another to my collection.

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bbctol
To be fair... the relativity of wrong supports the Lit major's point: if
wrongness is relative, you probably shouldn't make binary statements along the
lines of "previously we did not understand the basis of the universe, and now
we do." Relativity is less wrong than Newtonian mechanics, but it's still fair
to say Newtonian mechanics is an "incomplete" view of the universe.

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tgb
I think the biggest difference is that Newtonian mechanics tells us how forces
act but it doesn't say anything at all about what forces there are. Newtonian
gravitation gave one source of forces, but the rest were ad hoc: two objects
don't intersect so there must be a normal force and we observe sliding objects
to slow down so there must be a friction force. Now we think we have a
complete list of all forces that arise, ever.

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grigjd3
In particular to the question at hand Newtonian physics has a very hard time
explaining the galactic and super-galactic structure we see. Without
relativity, dark matter, and dark energy, those structures are not clear
conclusions and certainly Newtonian gravity does not arrive at those
conclusions. I think it very fair that Asimov points to the 20th century as
where we sussed out the structure of space.

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evanb
I think you mean astrophysical, rather than galactic? Galactic structures are
well-explained by Newtonian gravity (assuming dark matter, but that's
independent of whether you describe gravity as Newton or Einstein did). Large-
scale structure, too, I thought. Compact objects---black holes, quasars,
neutron stars, etc---and details of the galactic core need GR. But you get it
mostly right without it, I thought.

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grigjd3
The point is that dark matter is still a 20th century theory, meaning that the
structure of galaxies is understood only with 20th century theories. If you
read the letter carefully, you'll find that was the original claim made by
Asimov.

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knodi123
Can I get a group opinion on a related question? Would that be appropriate?

I got into a debate with someone over falsifiability. I claimed that the
falsifiability of a claim is relative to the person hearing it, and he claimed
it was an intrinsic property of the claim itself.

I said that the claim "I am currently sitting on a couch" is falsifiable to my
family, and potentially my neighbors, but not to a peasant in north korea. He
disagreed, rather profanely and insultingly, and the debate disintegrated,
because of John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. But I'd still like
to know what a more level-headed and calm group of people think on the
subject.

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sqeaky
Falsifiablity is generally treated more like a philosophical idea than a
practical concern.

Consider how relativity made several real predictions about things in the
universe, but no human was yet able to test them. In principle relativity was
considered falsifiable we just couldn't test it yet. When the 1918 eclipse
came about and we could measure the deviation of light from it expected course
by traveling through the gravity well of the sun, we had a real test and it
was relatively inexpensive and easy compared to to some scientific endeavors
(it was still not easy for the teams involved but it was no large hadron
collider).

This lets us permanently discard ideas that are in principle not falsifiable.
These ideas are categorically useless from the perspective of actually
understanding the world, like capricious invisible wish granting unicorns that
live in my garage or any typical conception of god.

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reptation
What if funding is very one-sided on an issue? Why can't a Scientific field
get caught in a 'local minimum' for centuries?

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rubidium
I fail to see the connection between your questions and the article. Can you
elaborate?

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kkotak
It seems like Asimov was totally trolled by the English lit. guy :) Good read
nonetheless. I fondly remember the days of handwritten communication. It's a
shame that we still live in the world where belief systems trump facts and
facts are relegated to opinions.

