http://www.edge.org/q2011/q11_10.html#krause

it’d write it pscience…

The point is that a good understanding of Bayesian probability is not only tremendously useful in everyday life – it helps one to make decisions rationally – but also helps us to understand how two people can both be rational but hold different beliefs, drawing different conclusions from the same evidence (in technical terms, they have different priors). It is useful to understand that belief, even scientific belief, is about degrees of certainty and uncertainty rather than absolutes.

Beyond this, Bayesian reasoning could easily be added to everyone’s cognitive toolkit by teaching it in school – the fundamentals are not very hard and don’t require much more than an ability to count and a basic understanding of fractions. But sadly, (in the UK at least) probability theory is currently taught in an old-fashioned and much less useful way.

A paradox is a mystery any understanding of which, within the limits of what we currently, understand, is impossible, because illogical.

The fact that, in physics, so many mysteries are eventually explained/understood, should not blind us to the fact that “the irrational” is often, not only possible, but remains every bit as incontrovertibly irrational.

However, people Einstein called “naive realists”, trapped in a sort of mechanistic world, have been seduced into assuming that there is no reason to believe that our understanding of ALL the mysteries of the physical world will not one day become a reality. It is just a matter of time. The “promissory note”, as one physicist apparently called it.

However, even God cannot make two mountains without a valley in between; and it is not my intuition that convinces me of this “chink” in God’s omnipotence; it my reason.

Surely, we would all have a clearer understanding, however fragmentary, of the limitations of science, if scientists, themselves, replaced the term, “counter-intuitive”, with “counter-rational”, when it is really only rational to do so.

Of course, there will surely remain mysteries that are soluble, some no doubt possessing an ominously baffling appearance, on first consideration. However, there is surely no reason to assume that no mysteries that baffle scientists will be genuine paradoxes and will remain completely insoluble, because as counter-rational as the mountains without valleys interposed.

Of course, physicists have, implicitly at least, understood and accepted this, realising that while arrived at by reasoning, yet remaining, in themselves, impenetrable, paradoxes can be used by them as staging posts, indeed, spring-boards to further entirely rational discoveries. At least, until trying to fathom the significance of the next paradox on the journey.

Put less sardonically: If you don’t understand something, don’t automatically assume there is a mystical, metaphysical cause. The corollary: If something is not understood and not explainable by today’s methodology, that doesn’t mean it’s magic; it simply means we don’t yet have the proper tools just yet.

Also, I think there’s a profound misunderstanding of the concept of “open mind.” Too many people treat open-mindedness as a willingness to to listen to the arguments of their opponent. Anybody can listen. A sure sign of an open mind is if you find yourself agreeing with your opponent without them saying a word; if, in the process of constructing a response, you discover the logical holes and inconsistencies of your own argument and willingly abandon your position.

No reason for Newton to expect that
(1) The speed of light is an absolute limit on objects with mass.
(2) Objects change their basic attributes (mass, length, age) when they approach the speed of light, when observed relative to objects at rest.
(3) Gravity bends space itself, so that light beams curve around massive objects.

All true, all go against what our eyes and ears and minds tell us.

Now what makes the tides work, Bill O?

“The brain-record of those experiences sometimes submerges, then resurfaces, sometimes submerging again over time. As I grow older, stronger, and more capable of contending with memory, I become more aware of how different my own internal record may be from others who lived the identical moment.”

The other or others in question could not have lived “the identical moment.”

Have those disciplines claiming a scientific basis–yeah, you really expect me to believe that quantum mechanics allows teleportation for dolphins–to provide an assertion that is falsifiable.

:-)

:-)

- Multiple working hypotheses.

Also the whole concept of confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. Don’t fall in love with a hypothesis to the point that you ignore all evidence that might falsify your hypothesis.