
The Relativity of Wrong (1989) - coffeeandjunk
https://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm
======
Buldak
I remember reading about this topic in philosophy class, namely, the
Pessimistic Induction [1]. I've wondered if a similar argument could be made
for moral progress. Certainly, many people are quick to make similarly
skeptical arguments which point out that people in the past had different
moral views than we do now, and no less confidence that they were right. If we
were to survey the history of moral conventions, would we find that it
converges in the same way as our scientific theories? (Does the arc of history
bend toward justice?)

[1] [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-
realism/#PessI...](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-
realism/#PessIndu)

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mixedmath
The linked article is an article written by Asimov. The main idea is an
allegory about how even though the Earth isn't flat, and the Earth isn't
spherical, it is less wrong to say that the Earth is a sphere than to say that
it is flat. The point it that it is exciting to be alive now, in a time when
physics is becoming so much more "right" about so many things so quickly.

Although I'm not sure if it exists, I would enjoy a brief description of ways
in which physics is more "right" now than in 1989, when this was written.

~~~
vilhelm_s
Specifically, he says the key period was 1900-1930.

I guess something like
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discove...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_scientific_discoveries#20th_century)
can be helpful, but I think none of the discoveries in the last 30 years are
quite as world-changing as general relativity, atoms, quantum physics, or
galaxies.

~~~
pmwhite
Plate tectonics is a candidate to go on that list, and it was controversial
until good undersea maps were available circa 1970. That is 50 years ago, not
30.

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apo
_I RECEIVED a letter the other day. It was handwritten in crabbed penmanship
so that it was very difficult to read. Nevertheless, I tried to make it out
just in case it might prove to be important. In the first sentence, the writer
told me he was majoring in English literature, but felt he needed to teach me
science. (I sighed a bit, for I knew very few English Lit majors who are
equipped to teach me science, but I am very aware of the vast state of my
ignorance and I am prepared to learn as much as I can from anyone, so I read
on.)_

Here Asimov reveals the scientist's secret weapons:

\- The source of an idea doesn't matter, only the idea itself.

\- It's ok, even expected, to not know everything.

~~~
hermitdev
I think it's worth noting, too, that science is very skeptical of itself. To
my knowledge, there's only 3 accepted laws: those of thermodynamics.

Science is not about necessarily finding __the __perfect explanation, but
finding a __more __perfect explanation. Always speculating, testing, refining,
building on the shoulders of the giants that have come before us. I doubt
within my lifetime, or even in anyone 's lifetime, that we will truly have a
Grand Universal Theory that fits 100% of the time. But, I have no doubt that
we'll keeping making steps to a more perfect explanation. Sometimes it will be
small steps, others huge leaps, but there will be progress, but no completion;
at least that's my current thought.

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markrages
One possible confusion is the words used. "Right" and "wrong" have moral
overtones. Asimov is using them to just mean "correct" and "incorrect".

~~~
pmwhite
True. But I presume that Asimov is answering the letter using the language of
the same. Translating "wrong" to "incorrect" does not add anything, better to
take the issue head on using the same language.

Better still would be to use "accuracy". But that presumes the audience is
ready to understand the nature of the issue in a scientific and logical way.
We want to get there, but we cannot start there.

~~~
shoo
Accuracy is a good choice of word. It doesn't come with the baggage of being a
binary classification.

The terminology I jump to is "approximation error", where error is some
quantified measurement of (in)accuracy. But using the word "error" might lead
one to think of e.g. "having erred" or "being in error", which is unhelpful.

There's a quote from Box I like: "all models are wrong, some models are
useful".

I guess this might be rephrased less snappily as "no model is completely
accurate, but some models are useful".

Replace "model" with "theory", "belief" as desired.

That said, some models or theories fall into the category of being "not even
wrong", i.e. to be so incoherent or unfalsifiable that it isn't even
theoretically possible to measure how accurate they are.

Pauli: "Das ist nicht nur nicht richtig; es ist nicht einmal falsch!"

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thedancollins
I agree with the English Lit major. No education is complete without a healthy
lack of respect for the same. "Healthy" being the key word.

