
Philosophy of science books every computer scientist should read - nkurz
http://tomasp.net/blog/2015/reading-list/
======
duaneb
Gonna go ahead and recommend Hume's _Treatise of Human Nature_ on top of this,
which underlines the complete impossibility of inductive proofs—not deductive,
recursive proofs, but inductive proofs based on incomplete knowledge of state
available.

This is not because it's immediately relevant to coding, but because it helps
illustrate the difference between knowing the complete state of a problem and
only knowing part of it—the latter of which is the central problem of science,
arguably. Most of the philosophy of science builds on this work either
directly or indirectly. Hustle and read it!

EDIT: reasoning -> proof, my bad.

~~~
jimrandomh
Given that inductive reasoning _is_ possible and that that it is (in the case
of Solomonoff induction) on very solid philosophical and mathematical footing,
I'm skeptical of any book which claims it's impossible.

~~~
duaneb
You can reason effectively, but proving is another thing entirely. You can
never prove beyond the shadow of a doubt we are not about to be razed by gamma
rays--there could be some arbitrary rules to the universe that only kick in
_right now_.

~~~
chroma
Sorry, but it's stuff like this that causes me to avoid most philosophy.

Yes, there are extremely small likelihoods for all kinds of extremely unlikely
things. That doesn't make tools like induction any less useful. Sure you can't
_prove_ X, but you can show that the likelihood of ~X is far, far lower than
the likelihood that you will hallucinate ~X.

~~~
graeme
This one's at the foundation of our science though. Karl Popper's ideas on
falsification have been very influential in how scientists frame their work.
And errors of induction have caused some notable financial blowups because
models missed tail risks.

The example you replied to was farfetched, but not an abstract ivory tower
notion – it's something deeply built into how we view the world.

This doesn't mean there's no use of inductive reasoning, or that we shouldn't
suspect that some things are far more likely true than others. But remembering
the ultimate impossibility of inductive proof can help avoid real world
errors.

~~~
chroma
Please notice how far afield you went to find a failure of inductive
reasoning: Financial markets. Not a bad math proof. Not an incorrect physics
theorem. Not even a civil engineering disaster. Markets!

Markets aren't exactly known for regular behavior. If anything, they are
_anti_ -inductive.[1] If you find and exploit any regularity in them, the
regularity eventually disappears.

It's for these reasons that I remain unswayed by your claim.

1\.
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/yv/markets_are_antiinductive/)

~~~
graeme
Ok, Newtonian physics. That was accepted for a long time because it was
utterly, utterly consistent with all our evidence.

Until it wasn't, in some edge cases. And we adopted a new theory that
explained things better.

My point was that the impossibility of induction _is at the core of science_.
Science generally does things well because it accounts for this. I cited
financial crashes as an example of what can happen if you _don 't_ account for
induction.

What, exactly, are you disagreeing with?

~~~
cbd1984
And it's still consistent with most of our everyday evidence.

It hasn't been falsified, it's been expanded. There's a difference.

~~~
scott_s
No, the universe Newton described was falsified. In the Newtonian universe,
information (including gravitation and electrical attraction) travelled
instantly.

Kuhn talks about this concept quite a bit in "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions". Relativity was not merely an expansion of the Newtonian
explanation of the universe. It was a complete change of our understanding of
how the universe worked, even though relativity reduces to the same equations
as Newtonian mechanics at low velocities and low masses.

------
n0us
For those who have a curiosity but lack the patience or inclination to read
these books, "Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction" is a highly
approachable introduction to this particular branch of philosophy.

[http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Science-Very-Short-
Introduc...](http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Science-Very-Short-
Introduction/dp/0192802836)

~~~
MichaelGG
That's exactly what I did, and it left me feeling even more confused. As an
example, the book, as I understood, proposes that "What is life?" is a serious
philosophical question for biologists to deal with. That sounds an awful lot
like arguing over definitions, which seems to be rarely useful.[1] Then
there's the famous Feynman quote which seems to make it clear that he thought
little of PhilSci.

It'd be great to see a real example applied to software languages. A concrete
"here's why it does X" kinda thing. I see there's several essays and a paper
linked from Tomas's site so perhaps I'll find something useful there. I do
understand that as a mere software writer, there may not be much for me.

Meanwhile, the biggest use for PhilSci is defending physics models we can't
test, isn't it? Perhaps, for example, using Bayesian probability to rate
things, and using, I dunno, elegance, as positive evidence. But I'm way out of
my depth here so perhaps someone can tell me if this is even remotely
coherent. Consciousness seems to also involve a lot of philosophy, mainly
because the understanding at this point is fairly limited and a lot of is just
reasoning about things. (Versus being able to point out how a brain really
works, how a consciousness works, etc. Some apparently think this is simply
unknowable and magical.)

1: It's more common that fighting for definitions is useful for rhetorical
purposes. E.g. copyright infringement being called _stealing_ versus
infringement or "piracy".

~~~
n0us
One of my majors was Philosophy and I'm often disappointed by the attitudes of
Feynman, Hawking, and other scientists towards philosophy. Their domain is
science and I don't think that it is their place or right to judge the value
of other disciplines as they apparently do not have a deep understanding of
the subject.

Questions like "what is life" have serious implications for biology and
arguing over definitions is important because it ensures that when we say
something like "a virus is not alive" we have a well grounded and justified
basis on which to make that claim. If we didn't take the time to argue over
definitions we would have scientists arguing past one another because of
trivial misunderstandings about the meaning of words rather than arguing over
some other actual significant point such as the conclusion that can be drawn
from the evidence. The role of Philosophy is often described as providing us a
framework for reasoning.

Philosophy typically intersects with science at the "edges" where we are
making novel discoveries in both disciplines and don't really know what to
make of them yet so we have to reason about the evidence and concepts to make
sense of it all so we can proceed.

You mention Physics, and the big debate in philosophy is whether the Standard
Model describes reality as it is, or whether it simply a convenient tool where
equation manages to encompass most of the empirical results we have so far.
I'm not sure exactly where you are going with Bayesian methods but probability
is definitely a focus of some philosophers and our department head wrote a
somewhat influential paper about different concepts of probability. (a
"taxonomy" of probability if you will but that might be a controversial way to
put it in an academic setting just like the rest of this post) Edit: I might
also add that this professor had a Phd in philosophy as well as theoretical
physics, so really smart guy, and the TA had one in physics and was pursuing
one in philosophy, so also a really smart guy.

It's also important to note that philosophy of science by and large does not
aim to judge the merits or validity of science/scientists/scientific theories.
The point is more to understand "what is science" and provide a passive
definition instead of a passive one if you will.

Philosophy of Mind is a "hot" branch right now as well and it remains to be
seen if any significant progress will be made in the next several decades. We
still don't have a consistent way to discuss "consciousness" and if you read
literature coming from people with a computer science background, then from a
psychological background, then a neurological one, you will find that they
describe it in very different (and likely incompatible) ways.

I've forgotten the context specifically but there is a degree of controversy
over the diagnosis of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia since the diagnosis
rates vary wildly depending on geography even when patients display the same
symptoms. The implication is that neither disease is "real" and is instead a
result of the training of psychiatrists. Yet we still don't want to abandon
the idea that these people are mentally ill so how do we provide a coherent
definition of a mental illness. It seems to pertain to consciousness in some
way and if so how? We can't answer this way with out a coherent and consistent
way to discuss consciousness which we still don't have.

I hope that gives you a bit of insight even if this comment comes across as
disjointed and I have been willingly vague and partially inaccurate at points
because you could spend a lifetime reading on some of these subjects but still
not consume all of the relevant literature. This again probably reflects the
difficulty that you had with that book. Philosophy of Science is already a
somewhat specific branch that is difficult to approach without some background
in philosophy already. In a way that book is an introduction to a specific
branch of philosophy that assumes a large amount of background knowledge.

~~~
MichaelGG
Thank you for your reply.

Who cares if we say "a virus is [not] alive"? _Obviously_ that's predicated on
the definition of alive. It doesn't change what a virus is, and certainly
doesn't change our understanding of viruses. It seems like the only time that
kind of thing matters is if you've got some existing issue with "alive" (like,
say, a law granting rights to anything "alive") and now need to fight it out
to retrofit something.

I'm thinking of "Dissolving the question"[1] and the infamous "If a tree falls
in a forest a but nothing hears it, does it make a sound?" The fact that this
generated any serious question/answer is absurd. Everyone agrees on what
happens. They just like to argue over what "sound" _really_ means. Again, this
is only an issue if you're e.g. at court resolving a poorly written noise
violation law. Yet "If a tree falls" isn't apparently used as a quick lesson
in definitions, but apparently treated like it holds something interesting.

It might be fun to argue stuff. Like, is vim _truly_ an IDE if I load it up
right? Doesn't really change anything, but it might be fun. I get the feeling
a lot of philosophy consists of people chasing this. If it's not to judge
merits or validity, and is just passive, then perhaps that explains it.

On physics and using Bayes versus Scientific Method, I was thinking more about
string theory (and I know nothing of this at all), where, since we can't test
it at all, it's not proper science. Yet using a Bayesian model, we're free to
add evidence apart from verifying experiments. If, for example, I come up with
some simple rules for how the universe works, and out of those arise a huge
amount of known equations, there may be no way to test if my rules are true
and worth studying more on. It'd violate the scientific method, since there's
no testing. Yet the mere fact that that "one little trick" explains a bunch of
known physics is a huge amount of positive evidence by itself.

Again, thanks for taking the time to write out your reply; I did appreciate
it.

1:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/of/dissolving_the_question/)

~~~
justinnhli
I want to push on the "alive" issue a bit more. You're absolutely correct in
that it doesn't tell us anything more about the virus - but it _does_ tell us
more about our definition of "life".

This is in line with the "tree falls in a forest" example as well - the
"paradox" is not in whether the tree falls, but whether we would consider it
sound. The solution is to be more precise about defining "sound", as either
"vibration of air molecules" or "vibration of someone's ear drum". Similarly,
the "are viruses alive" question is pushing us for a more precise definition
of "alive", which we can then apply to (for example) how we might classify
self-sustaining chains of chemical reactions on alien planets.

~~~
MichaelGG
But there is no precise definition of sound that encompasses both (or more?)
uses. It could refer to either, and you just need to make it clear and the
whole fuss disappears.

------
kijin
Everyone who is interested in popular science should study at least the basics
of philosophy of science. It helps us understand the meaning and implications
of a lot of concepts that we often use in our arguments, such as
falsifiability, reproducibility, and "evidence-based".

These concepts sound neat in theory but need to be interpreted a lot more
carefully, with a healthy dose of subtlety, in the messy world of bleeding-
edge scientific research. Especially if you're using them to try to discredit
somebody else's work as "unscientific".

If you're the type that gets impatient with philosophy, the broader field of
science and technology studies (STS) is a lot more exciting and
interdisciplinary. It's a loose collaboration among sociologists,
anthropologists, historians, philosophers, and political scientists who share
a common interest in the interaction between science and human society as a
whole.

If you're interested in STS, Sergio Sismondo's _Introduction to Science and
Technology Studies_ offers a high-level overview of the field, both
philosophical and political, in a compact and accessible package. The
bibliography section is also a gold mine of interesting books and case studies
from every subfield of STS. (Disclaimer: Sergio was my Ph.D. supervisor.)

Programmers in the age of social networking and IoT might also find actor-
network theory particularly interesting. Callon and Latour were way ahead of
their time, trying to view everyday objects as first-class citizens in the
vast, distributed network of knowledge that makes up modern science. French
sociologists are crazy, but sometimes they're prophetic as well.

------
DanielBMarkham
Speaking as a complete layman, Philosophy of Science rocks. Feynman was
smoking crack. Philosophy of Science is an extremely important discipline. It
will just make your head explode. (Along with epistemology and couple others)

I started on my learning journey using The Great Courses series -- it's kind
of like famous professors giving an abbreviated overview (20-40 hours) of
their 101 courses. Deep enough that it's not some Discovery Channel show,
light enough that you're not up until 2 a.m. every night for a month reading
Hegel.

I think that the reason most scientists like Feynman don't get it is that they
treat philosophy as a scientific discipline. It is not. Philosophy is the
asking of questions. Every now and then you get into a fertile area where
those questions can become their own science. This is why philosophy is called
the "Mother of all sciences" Oddly enough, I think philosophers themselves
have lost their way, but that's a story for another day.

My advice to those who are interested is to get an easy introduction, and
don't take it too seriously. I love philosophy because it's like meeting the
smartest people that ever lived in a bar and having them talk about really
deep questions. But you'll have more fun talking to a _lot_ of people than
spending a deep dive with one guy. They tend to have a few good ideas and then
spend the rest of their lives over-applying them.

Philosophy is also a great way to begin to talk about the important questions
involving technology and people. Don't let anybody tell you any different.
I've been very interested in the Philosophy of Language and how it relates to
technology teams talking to users about solutions. Just got through writing an
essay comparing the conditions that led to Sir Francis Bacon's New Orgonon
with conditions in the Agile practitioner community today. Anybody writing
apps controlling the speech of millions should have a grounding in political
theory -- or risk turning the planet into a cesspool of conformity just so
they can make a buck. Cool stuff.

~~~
ajani
> Just got through writing an essay comparing the conditions that led to Sir
> Francis Bacon's New Orgonon with conditions in the Agile practitioner
> community today.

Can you share a link to the essay?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
It's part of a script for a video training series I'm working on. I'll post a
link when we release it.

------
kriro
I think you can start with "For and Against Method" which gives you Feyerabend
and Lakatos. I'd also substitute Ludwik Fleck for Kuhn.

But that's personal preference. The list is solid (imo)

~~~
kijin
Michael Polanyi is also a solid substitute for Kuhn, and a contemporary of
Fleck.

Kuhn is way more popular, though, and the _Structure_ is short and
straightforward, so it's probably a safer recommendation for beginners.

------
cryoshon
I would also highly suggest Giere's book, Understanding Scientific Reasoning:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/015506326X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/015506326X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=015506326X&linkCode=as2&tag=fasdf0c-20&linkId=3GLKKT5SZHAPUXQR)

It's a textbook so it's a bit denser than a standard nonfiction offering, but
it explains the perspectives of a few famous philosophers of science, the
scientific method, clears up some common misunderstandings, and is packed with
case studies which make the concepts easy to understand. It's a great piece
for either reference or learning about science in general.

------
eci
Would add The Sciences of the Artificial by Herbert A. Simon [1] to the list.
The current list is lacking a design science view, which is much more
applicable to computer science than natural science books.

[1] [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sciences-
artificial](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sciences-artificial)

------
aalhour
I also recommend the course PHIL202 - Philosophy of Science on Saylor.com. It
is for free.

[https://legacy.saylor.org/phil202/Intro/](https://legacy.saylor.org/phil202/Intro/)

------
noahlt
I would add: Conjectures and Refutations, by Karl Popper.

~~~
amadvance
And also "The Logic of Scientific Discovery", Karl Popper.

I read it at young age, and it was an open-mind read.

~~~
gjm11
It might be worth mentioning that the titles of those two Popper books are the
reason why Imre Lakatos's book recommended in the OP is called "Proofs and
refutations: the logic of mathematical discovery".

(I don't think knowing this makes any particular difference to how one reads
any of the books involved; it's just amusing.)

------
whatever_dude
"A Science Of Operations" sounds great.

But can someone explain to me why the hard cover costs $120 (Amazon), and the
paperback $180 (Amazon, B&N)?

It's 342 pages, so it's not like it's one of those encyclopedic tomes. Not
that I try justifying a price-per-page, but what is it, a collection of
expensive papers in print form?

~~~
tpetricek
It is an academic publication by Springer. That's why - academic publishing is
just crazy. (Anybody around here doing a start-up that would make it
obsolete?)

I would, of course, never suggest downloading the PDF from unofficial sources,
but I could completely see why people are doing that.

------
ubasu
Please keep in mind that the book by Bruno Latour referenced here (Science in
Action) and another of his articles was lampooned in the Sokal Affair because
Latour was confused about relativity:

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

[http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/trans...](http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/transgress_v2/transgress_v2_singlefile.html)

[http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/le_monde_english.html](http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/le_monde_english.html)

[http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/noretta.html](http://www.physics.nyu.edu/sokal/noretta.html)

------
sawwit
For more practical persons I recommend skipping the historical parts of
philosophy and go straight to Bayesianism. I recommend "Rationality" by E.
Yudkowsky as an entry point, "Probabilistic Inference" by J. Pearl,
"Artificial Intelligence" by Russel & Norvig for the theory and "Formal Theory
of Creativity & Fun & Intrinsic Motivation" by J. Schmidhuber for inspiration.

[1]:
[http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/creativity.html](http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/creativity.html)

~~~
pron
I wouldn't recommend anything by Yudkowsky as an introduction to anything
(other than maybe an introduction to contemporary techno-cults, aimed at the
graduate level). As a "philosopher" he is exceptionally inept at questioning
his own assumptions and reasoning. His writing lack any philosophical rigor
(they try to obscure their axiomatic assumptions rather than articulate them,
let alone explore them). As a result, his "philosophy" \-- and in particular
his views of rationality -- feels very antiquated (some read as if they'd been
written in the 1700s) or something Sheldon Cooper would write. It has all the
philosophical rigor of a child; or Ayn Rand. In any event, it is very
uninformed and limited (not to speak of his nomenclature, which deviates from
that of philosophy, and so makes orienting his views in the grand scheme of
things difficult).

His writings are more of an interest to people who are interested in
researching particular modes of thought in various sub-cultures. In this case,
how antiquated views of "rationality" are gaining popularity in Silicon Valley
pop-philosophy: [http://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if-you-
want-...](http://harpers.org/archive/2015/01/come-with-us-if-you-want-to-
live/?single=1)

He is a cult-leader, not a researcher, and like all cult leaders, his talents
lie in charmingly convincing gullible victims that his thoughts are profound,
when, in fact, they don't exceed those of a very intelligent 14-year-old know-
it-all. If you approach his writings as actual philosophy (rather than
intriguing historical documents of a techno-libertarian cult, which is what
they are), after reading them you are certain to know less of philosophy than
when you've started, even if your original knowledge was absolute zero.

His writings are to philosophy what Fox News is to news: inspire and agitate
unquestioning followers, while making sure they don't learn about the world by
constructing an elaborate -- and enticing -- virtual world to isolate them
from reality.

~~~
johann28
This is a very important point. His cult can wreck your thinking. I think it
should only be read by people with enough contextual information to call his
bullshit. He definitely _is_ a smart guy in a way, and you can't easily attack
his writings in a way that would be easy to understand for a newcomer.

So I won't attempt that here. Instead, I'll tell my (random internet guy's)
feelings and vague ideas: You know when you meet a stranger and you feel
something is off, but you don't really know what, but something's funny?
Martial art and personal defense coaches usually recommend that you listen to
this feeling and act accordingly.

Singulitarianism is basically an apocalyptic doom-religion. It follows the
same scheme. For example, I just read a reddit thread
([https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/3vsoe7/chri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/3vsoe7/christianity_appears_to_have_been_designed_to/))
the other day and the post reminded me of Singulitarianism a lot. There is an
apocalypse, some external information that you should rely on instead of you
intuitive faculties because they are biased and unreliable, but if you follow
the path of the leader you'll be saved.

Also, its followers react to criticism similarly to religious people.

And another problem is that nobody serious has ever rolled up their sleeves,
went through and criticized the whole mess of their Bible (called Sequences),
a massive collection of writings, interlinked thousand-fold in an intricate
complex network. Simply because the people who could do this don't care much
about some random guy posting stuff to his blog.

Fortunately since the Basilisk story came out and we could see Yudkowsky's
reaction, it was an eye-opener for many people. Still his movement is quite
well-spread and gets linked to often by CS people, mathematics students etc.

And I won't start to refute individual claims. I admit this. The thing is not
about the individual claims but the way they are linked and the kind of
narrative it builds. The untold assumptions lurking in the background etc. The
way he tries to take credit for age-old ideas by renaming them and not caring
about the origin of them, since the history of philosophy is irrelevant
anyway, we should just read his blog posts and related stuff.

My advice for novices is to start with the mainstream. You can of course
criticize the mainstream once you have sufficient knowledge. Read textbooks,
classical works, go to universities, take interesting courses etc. Don't teach
yourself this stuff from a random guy's blog who has no qualifications on
anything he speaks about (which isn't a disproof but a red flag).

I've been vague and I stand by it. Yes I might have been irrational in my
comment or led by feelings and emotions. I don't care. I just had to put this
out here. I don't aim my paragraphs as ultimate refutation but as a warning. I
felt I had to write this for the benefit of people who may be new to this
man's world.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Climate science is basically an apocalyptic doom-religion. It follows the
same scheme. For example, I just read a reddit thread
([https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/3vsoe7/chri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/3vsoe7/chri...))
the other day and the post reminded me of climate science a lot. There is an
apocalypse, some external information that you should rely on instead of you
intuitive faculties because they are biased and unreliable, but if you follow
the path of the leader you'll be saved.

And another problem is that nobody serious has ever rolled up their sleeves,
went through and criticized the whole mess of their Bible (called Climate
Science Papers), a massive collection of writings, interlinked thousand-fold
in an intricate complex network. Simply because the people who could do this
don't want to be criticized in the media.

Fortunately since the Climategate story came out and we could see the
leadership's reaction, it was an eye-opener for many people. Still this
movement is quite well-spread and gets linked to often by journalists,
politicians, etc._

None of your critiques are remotely specific to lesswrong. All could be
equally well applied to climate science or a variety of other things where I
suspect you'd be unwilling to apply it.

~~~
johann28
If climate science was advocated by a single person without any formal
qualification in climatology, physics, hydrology, Earth Science etc. it would
be similar.

But Climate science is a lot less about an Apocalypse. Mainstream climate
science isn't about a total wiping out of humanity but a few degrees of change
in temperature, extreme weather, more deserts, floods etc., which are terrible
catastrophes but nowhere near on the scale that Yudkowsky likes to dream up
(evil robots destroying everything and torturing and extorting and creating
myriads of simulations of simulations of you being tortured in the worst ways
possible in various hypothetical, counterfactual scenarios to acausally
motivate you to serve these evil overlords etc.)

Also, climate science doesn't ask you to "obviously" dismiss reputable fields
and past sources. It's just a very bad analogy. The best defense of
Singulitarianism is the "but what if you're wrong" kind of betting. Because
their imagined doom scenario is so extremely unimaginably bad, they argue that
they can get away with little proof, since multiplying the huge disaster with
a little probability still gives a large expected risk. They like to say "shut
up and multiply" as a slogan for this, i.e. multiply probability and outcome
to get the expectation. He lays the groundwork and path for this such that if
you gradually get into his system, he can take you in the woods without you
noticing. It's no less than a panic-inducing mind virus.

And yeah, you can say I didn't disprove him with this. I don't want to. My
main point is: don't start with his writings and don't recommend them to
people who are uneducated in these topics. You'll do them a favor by
recommending reputable sources.

~~~
Aljik
Your writing implies you think Yudkowsky believes/promotes the Basilisk. Are
you not aware he thinks that is nonsense?

~~~
johann30
I have no idea what he truly believes in and I don't even care too much. What
I care about is the effects of his writings. Remember we are debating whether
his writings are to be recommended to someone who is new to philosophy about
science, algorithms, cognitive biases etc.

The Basilisk is an organic outgrowth from it. And it's just one of many. They
follow naturally from the tenets of the religion, they aren't outliers or "bad
apples".

~~~
yummyfajitas
To repeat this idea with a different mood affiliation:

I have no idea what muslims truly believe and I don't even care too much. What
I care about is the effects of their beliefs...Terrorism is an organic
outgrowth from it. And it's just one of many...

I take it that if Donald Trump makes this claim, you'll support it?

~~~
dang
Please stop trolling on HN.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Can you clarify what you mean by the word "trolling"? I'm honestly asking the
question because I don't understand what you object to.

If I understand what the term means to you I can avoid that in the future.

~~~
dang
You've used a dismissive hand-wave ("mood affiliation") to reduce somebody's
comment to something clearly provocative ("muslims... terrorism... Trump"),
then alleged that the commenter must support the latter. Such a post is in
effect just a delivery mechanism for the provocation, so I call it trolling.
It's like reaching out and tweaking somebody's nose as you're talking—it
doesn't much matter what point you happened to be arguing for at the time.

Your post (and you post a lot of these) takes the _form_ of logically
substituting one expression for an equivalent one, but that's not what you're
doing at all—you're simply pretending to. Not even mathematical expressions
can be substituted that way without careful proof that every step preserves
the meaning, and natural language simply doesn't work this way to begin with.
It isn't valid to rip something out of its context, do major surgeries on it,
then fling it back with the claim that it's what the other is really saying.
When the thing you're flinging back seems designed to be offensive, the
likelihood that this is sincere communication, aiming at understanding,
plummets.

Many of your recent comments seem crafted to be technically unimpeachable
while still tweaking people's noses. I could be wrong about that and would
prefer to be; it's hard to read intent. But the fact that they come across
that way is already a problem. You'd contribute more of value if you
sincerely, and not only technically, eliminated that element and sought
neutral ground with others. Note that this doesn't entail changing your views,
though it can involve making an assessment of how much the conversation can
tolerate before it goes haywire, and calibrating accordingly. But that's part
of civil discourse anyhow. It makes no sense to send messages with little
chance of being received.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I didn't mean to imply that I really thought Johann30 supported Trump or
islamophobia. Rather, I used that example because I thought it was such an
extreme and obviously false example of similar logic ("I have no idea what X
truly believe and I don't even care too much") leading to wrong results. I
realize now that my last sentence could be misinterpreted as being literal
rather than rhetorical with an obvious negative answer (as was intended by
me).

And of course there is possibly a distinguishing principle that Johann30 used
as an unstated premise - that's just a flaw of natural language. But I realize
I could have been clearer in allowing for that possibility. I'll try to be
more literal in the future.

I understand you want others to stop being provoked by my comments, but I
can't really control that.

What is the concrete action you'd like me to take? Will being more literal and
explicitly requesting the elucidation of unstated premises/stating that I
obviously don't think the person believes the contradictory conclusion/etc be
sufficient? Should I include an explicit disclaimer that I'm making an
argument by contradiction? Or are arguments by contradiction now explicitly
disallowed (only constructive logic, I guess)?

~~~
scott_s
You could create a neutral version of the claim:

 _I have no idea what X truly believe and I don 't even care too much. What I
care about is the effects of Y ... Z is an organic outgrowth from it. And it's
just one of many..._

Your claim is that if you substitute in any X, Y and Z (where X, Y and Z are
consistent with each other), the statement is equivalent. You want the
original poster to reply to this idea. Dan's point, which I agree with, is
that putting in emotionally charged X, Y and Z is not civil, promotes
emotional responses and is effectively trolling.

(I also happen to agree with Dan that the particular X, Y and Z matter, and
the sentences are not necessarily logically equivalent with any X, Y and Z.
But it's still possible to make the above argument without the emotional
baggage. I understand it's a rhetorical technique to shock the reader into
seeing what you perceive as sloppy thinking, but I think it is more likely to
inflame and prevent discussion on the original topic.)

~~~
yummyfajitas
To make the argument the conclusion can't be neutral. It has to be
definitively and obviously wrong. That's why I chose Trump and Islam - it's
such a ridiculously wrong conclusion that I doubted anyone here could support
it.

I agree that the particular X/etc sometimes matters. And a valid argument
against mine would be to give a clear limiting principle (something unstated
in the original post, but perhaps implicit?) that applies to the critique of
less wrong but fails for Islam.

Pron kind of tried to do this - he said Johann30's argument can only apply to
small groups and Islam is large (though where this large vs small distinction
comes from is unstated).

To take a mathematical (and hopefully completely uncontroversial) example of
this:

Fool: "The sum of IID random variables is gaussian. Therefore $Z"

Smartass: "Oh yeah? What about C/(1+x^2)? Your argument is invalid."

Fool: "Oops I meant IID random variables with finite variance, just thought
that was implicit and obvious."

Of course, if Fool can't come up with that added clause then the Smartass has
disproven him.

~~~
scott_s
You can still construct an example that is "definitely and obviously wrong"
but _emotionally_ neutral. Which you did above.

------
aalhour
Speaking about books, there are a lot more accessible books than those on the
list, and here are a few:

[1] Philosophy of Science: A Contemporary Introduction.

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415891779](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415891779)

[2] Philosophy of Science Vol 1 & 2 by Mario Bunge

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0765804131/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0765804131/)

[http://www.amazon.com/dp/076580414X/](http://www.amazon.com/dp/076580414X/)

------
omphalos
I recently encountered the Duhem-Quine thesis on wikipedia which I think
presents a really interesting perspective on testability, something I never
really questioned before in the philosophy of science.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duhem%E2%80%93Quine_thesis)

------
arstin
I would add Ruth Millikan's work. "Language, Thought, and Other Biological
Categories" is her masterpiece, but way out of depth for a beginner ("out of
depth" in philosophy meaning most people are likely to be bored, confused, or
dismissive yet with the right background the book is amazingly exciting,
insightful, and valuable). "On Clear and Confused Ideas" is more approachable
and has been made available for free online now.
[http://web2.uconn.edu/philosophy/department/millikan/clearct...](http://web2.uconn.edu/philosophy/department/millikan/clearct.htm)

------
unix-junkie
I would add "The Formation of the Scientific Mind" by Gaston Bachelard. This
text analyses the nature of the mental patterns that prevent from making
actual discoveries (what he calls "epistemoligical obstacles").

------
jgd
My #1 recommendation is
[http://beginningofinfinity.com/](http://beginningofinfinity.com/) by David
Deutsch. I also recommend his two TED talks, especially
[https://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain...](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_explanation)
which makes clear why induction is simply wrong and explains how science
actually works.

------
jtth
I would add: The Retreat to Commitment, by W.W. Bartley, III.

------
lugus35
The Value of Science
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0375758488/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0375758488/)

Meditations on First Philosophy
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0192806963/](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0192806963/)

------
zb
In a similar vein, I highly recommend _Discussion of the Method_ by Billy
Vaughn Koen. It's a philosophy of engineering that resolves many of the
unanswered questions you'll have after reading Feyerabend, and also gives an
overview of the field of philosophy of science along the way.

------
pmoriarty
Also:

Heidegger's "The Question Concerning Technology"

Ellul's "The Technological Society"

------
sklogic
Why Popper is not on the list?

~~~
tpetricek
Popper is definitely important! He's not on the list because I didn't read his
works (I know I should). His key points are widely known that I was simply
more interested in reading books that go in other directions. (There is also
nice introduction to Popper in the textbook mentioned.) But I would like to
get back to him!

------
jdp23
While all the books he suggests are worth reading, the list as a whole has a
major gap: nothing from feminist or post-colonialist perspectives. So I'd add
Sandra Harding's "Sciences From Below", and perhaps the collection
"Discovering Reality: Feminist Perspectives on Epistemology, Metaphysics,
Methodology, and Philosophy of Science".

~~~
trentmb
Are there any Marxist or African-American perspectives you might be able to
recommend?

~~~
jdp23
Not sure that it's classified as "Philosophy of Science" but Mackenzie Wark's
"A Hacker Manifesto" is pretty darn Marxist ... it even has a red cover :)
Here's a 10th-anniversary interview of him by Melissa Gregg:
[https://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/courting-
vectoralists-...](https://lareviewofbooks.org/interview/courting-vectoralists-
interview-mckenzie-wark-10-year-anniversary-hacker-manifesto)

On the African-American perspective, nothing leaps to mind, sorry. Anybody
else have suggestions?

~~~
trentmb
Thanks-

I've recently started a 'It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it' sort of pursuit- I'm currently
stumbling through Lois Tysons' "Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide"

EDIT: I mean that I'm doing my best to suspend/address whatever judgments I
currently have, not immediately discard what I read.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Surely 'It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it' is a mark of any competent developer , After all you
very often have to entertain competing theories about the inner workings of a
program and pretty much everyone involved, users, maintainers, architects,
managers, etc., will have a different theory. As a developer you will probably
have to be able to discuss all of them without necessarily accepting any.

Unfortunately this does not necessarily require an educated mind.

