From the Vault: Post-Empirical Science

Most scientists declare empirical falsifiability -- the notion that a theory may be proven right or wrong via scientific investigation -- to be the core principle of science. Others, such as string theorists, think science should move beyond those boundaries. Is empiricism an unnecessary straight jacket? Is “post-empirical science” an oxymoron? Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick explore in this episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast. (Originally published Sept. 15, 2016)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it is
Vault time. We're going into the vault for a classic
Stuff to Blow Your Mind episode from September. And in
this episode, we explored a question about the nature of science.
Is there such a thing as post empirical science. A

(00:26):
lot of you science fans out there might be thinking,
what that sounds like an oxymoron, and it really does
kind of seem like an oxymoron. But there are some
people who would make a case otherwise, maybe some people
in the physics community, some people in the mathematics community.
And so we take a look at what it would
mean for a post empirical type of science to exist.
Does that idea even have any merit? Yeah, this is

(00:48):
an interesting one to revisit following our recent episodes on
black holes. I think yeah. So we hope you enjoyed
this episode about the nature of science. Welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,

(01:11):
welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I want
to put you in a scenario. All right, let's do it. Okay,
So just recently, I was at a family gathering, a
wedding and old family event. And when you go to
a you know, family reunion type event, you meet a
lot of people you haven't seen in a long time.
You get to catch up on what they're doing. So
imagine you are at a family reunion type event and

(01:32):
you're talking to a distant cousin of yours who's going
to night school to get her graduate degree. And you're like, oh, cool, yeah,
I do I do a science show. What are you
studying at your your school? And she could give you
a couple of answers. Let's contemplate the first one. The
first answer is, oh, I study radio astronomy. So we
look at distant objects in the sky by measuring the

(01:54):
radio frequency energy they admit. And you're like, cool, so
how does that work? And she says, so we aim
radio telescope arrays at far away stars and galaxies, and
we collect the data and faded into computers, and that
allows us to draw conclusions about the physical properties of
those objects. All right, sounds legit. Okay, here's another answer

(02:14):
she could give. She says, oh, yeah, I study psychic
astro sociology, so we study distant civilizations in the Milky
Way galaxy by tuning into the psychic energies that they
beam to our planet through their Numa transmitters. Okay, their
number of red flags already. Yeah, So you don't even
really have to be a scientist or even very scientifically

(02:35):
literate to tell that one of these answers refers to
real science and the other one does not. But the
question you should ask yourself is what is the criterion
you have used. You've intuitively used some kind of rule
to rule in one of those answers as real science
and rule out the other one as fake science pseudoscience.

(02:58):
It sounds like garbage. So you know the difference when
you see it, But what is the principle that actually
makes the difference? Right? And and this question becomes ever
more important when you when you move away from the
obvious examples and you get into that that stretch of
gray area, that that that borders the dividing line. Um. Now,

(03:21):
in terms of pseudoscience, I do want to throw in
real quick that the oldest known use of the word
pseudoscience dates back from when the historian James petite Andrew
referred to alchemy as quote a fantastical pseudoscience, And certainly
you can make that case for that with alchemy. Well

(03:41):
maybe if you have a close of mine, I'm going
to get some gold eventually. I mean, in some ways
alchemy was kind of a proto science. But the the
actual scientific properties in alchemy, and this is kind of
a topic for another day, um are kind of lost
amid all the the occult concerns. But in the philosophy
of science, exactly this problem, this problem of what rule

(04:05):
do you use to tell the difference between science and
pseudoscience has a name. It's a named problem, right, Yeah,
the demarcation problem. Yeah, you're drawing the boundary, setting the
border between one side and the other, between truth and falsehood,
between good and bad, between sin and virtue. I mean
it and it sounds pretty simple, but it's a it's

(04:28):
a very important concern for the philosophy of science for
a couple of different reasons. From a purely theoretical point
of view, Uh, it's important philosophers talking to each other
about what things mean and the depth of their meaning.
But also from a very practical point it's because obviously
science is humanity's most reliable font of knowledge. It's the

(04:48):
tower we've built that we use to ascend to new heights. Uh,
technologically speaking, cosmologically speaking, it's our it's our best method
for advancing solutions, and something we're constantly touting in advertising, healthcare,
criminal justice, environmental policy, entertainment, politics, and everything in between. Yeah,

(05:09):
so science is applied to science. Isn't just uh, intellectual
endeavor taking place in a vacuum. Once we have a
scientific conclusion, we very often take that conclusion out and
do something with it. Yeah, it's not just in the
monastery on the hill. It's down in the marketplace, it's
in the household. It's it's factoring in your decisions. I mean,

(05:29):
like we're saying earlier, it's one thing to to hear
someone's diet tribe about some very fringe e topic and
and instantly judge, oh, well, that's that's complete malarchy, that's pseudoscience.
But where it gets gets weirder is when you're picking
up a product at the super at the supermarket, you know,
or you're you're you're, there's a vitamin supplements the hand,
and then you start trying to figure out, wait, this

(05:51):
is speaking the language of science. It's not hitting those
crazy keywords that my cousin knows throwing out at this
imagined wedding. Uh, what am I to do? Mega vitea
fan burns fat fast? Should I trust this? I mean? Yeah?
So it has real implications in the real world that
it impacts your wallet, and it impacts the budgets of

(06:13):
countries that fund scientific research. You don't want the government
funding research in something that is complete bunk, right, So
getting to this question of demarcation, like how do you
tell the difference? What rule do you use? One? One
common dictionary definition of pseudoscience is something like quote a
collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based

(06:35):
on the scientific method. Well that's not very helpful, is it, right,
because that that just it's circular. It invokes the concept
of science to say what's not science? So it's not
helpful for solving the demarcation problem because it just says
pseudoscience is that which appears to be science but is
not those who are entering the tower of science and

(06:58):
not doing science there, or something to that effect, because yeah,
because the uh, the the scientific method is still present
at least it's invoked, right, so it becomes difficult to decipher. Yeah,
So to really solve the problem, you'd want to come
up with some descriptive rule that exclusively describes science. It's
like a descriptive statement that describes everything that is science

(07:20):
and rules out everything that is not science. But it's
hard to come up with a rule like that, isn't it. Yeah?
I mean again, especially as you you become closer and
closer to the boundary line. You know it's um because
as we'll discuss here, it's it's kind of like imagine
the border between two states and you have you have

(07:42):
a couple, you have a couple of towns, right, and
one's just immediately on one side of the state line,
the others on the other. And if you're applying of
it's a very strict understanding of boundary lines here, then
this one is definitely in Arkansas, and this one's definitely
in Tennessee. But then if you start saying, well, actually
there's a little room uh to to go on either side,

(08:03):
then it just then you're confounded, All right, is this
one in Tennessee or is this one in Arkansas? How
about this one? Are they both in both states or
is it just how I feel when I visit that town. Right, So,
a lot of the solutions to the demarcation problem try
to draw some clear line. Okay, here we have an
exclusive rule that makes the distinction. So I know a
lot of scientists and some philosophers of science would probably

(08:25):
want to make a distinction based on empiricism as as
the first criteria. Right. So, empiricism is the idea that
it involves observations. You know, it's what you see or
what you can measure externally. That science can't be just
an internal logical exercise that has no contact with something
you see happening in the real world. Yeah, there has to.

(08:47):
It has it's evidence based. Right then. Of course you've
also got the you know, the scientific method that you
learned in elementary school. Some people would look at that
and say, okay, you know, that's basically how science works.
You ask a question, you make educated guests, that's your hypothesis.
You do some kind of empirical test on observable reality
to see if your guess is correct. Then you analyze

(09:08):
the results and draw conclusions. And you know, that's a
good simplified version for kids to learn yeah, I mean,
how do you walk into a dark room and find
out what what what the room contains and accurately judge
it without you know, hitting your head on something. But
there's a problem with that if we're trying to describe
science as it happens in the real world of professional discoveries,

(09:30):
because it doesn't. That method doesn't very closely describe the
process by which we came up with all kinds of
important and correct scientific theories in history. Like lots of
theories in physics, for example, we're just conceived simply as
abstract thought experiments, and they went for a long time
without empirical testing. Now we've empirically tested them and we know,

(09:52):
but they just started in Einstein's head. There are a
number of scientific concepts that were conceived, or certainly they
the people behind them attributed their conception to dreams, you know.
So it's hard to fit the dream world into any
serious contemplation of scientific method, right. Yeah. So there are

(10:14):
plenty of examples you can go through through history of
scientific theories that we didn't have empirical confirmation of for
a long time, even after people had accepted them as
probably true. You know, one good example that it comes
up in the debate we're gonna be talking about today
is the question of atoms. For a long time, scientists
knew that matter was based on atoms, but there was

(10:37):
no test they could do to confirm the existence of atoms.
Now there are, fortunately, but we didn't. We didn't have
those tests for a long time. Another problem with the
basic scientific method you learn an elementary school is that
if you just have some bad methodology, you can rule
in plenty of pseudoscience. Right, Like, if you just use
the scientific method, but you use it poorly, you can

(11:00):
prove the existence of psychics, ghosts, aliens, whatever you want. Yeah,
I mean we see this time and time again. Right,
They'll be one guy who is able to create a
zero gravity state in a lab, and then any and
everyone else tries to replicate it and they don't get
the same results. And therefore either either what everybody's wrong,

(11:21):
and this one guy got it right once. No, it's
the reverse. Yeah, he used the method, he just did
a really bad job of using the method. Another way
that I think some people would address how to define
science and uh and solve the demarcation problem is I
think totally useless and they define science in a kind
of post talk back engineered pragmatic sense, as in, they

(11:42):
define sciences the method of inquiry which produces correct and
useful results. This is obviously not a helpful solution to
demarcation problem. Now if you're hearing all of this and thinking, yeah,
but then again, I mean, scientists are just doing their
scientific work. Do they really need to worry about all
of this, Uh, this philosophical back and forth, Like, is

(12:03):
this just a lot of talk that doesn't really amount
to anything? I would argue, no, it is not. I
think these philosophical concepts are crucial to doing good science. Yeah,
and uh, especially when you when you start facing the
realization that you can't just do the science right. Uh.
There's a there's a wonderful quote from Daniel Dennett from

(12:26):
his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, which we've discussed this in
a previous episode, but he says, quote, scientists sometimes deceive
themselves into thinking that philosophical ideas are only at best,
decorations or parasitic commentaries on the hard, objective triumphs of science,
and that they themselves are immune to the confusions. That

(12:46):
philosophers devote their lives to dissolving. But there is no
such thing as philosophy free science. There is only science
whose philosophical baggage is taken on board without examination. I
entirely agree with that quote. I think that's right on
the money. I mean, if you hear a scientist say,
I don't bother with philosophy. I'm not interested in philosophical

(13:08):
content concepts. I just do the science. It's kind of
like if you had a person running for president who says, look,
I'm not political, I'm just gonna govern. Would you trust
that person? I mean, the reality is what they are
going to be governed by some kind of philosophy, whether
they acknowledge it or not. And uh in the person

(13:29):
who claims not to have a philosophy or not to
have you know, any kind of ideology guiding them is
just advertising the fact that they haven't thought very deeply
about this. Yeah, they because I like the idea of
a non political uh individual just judging without just ruling,
without any kind of uh, you know, weird hang ups

(13:50):
and constraints and agenda. But for that to really work,
you'd have to have like a superhuman you have to
have someone with like a self moving soul with someone
who could who could think and approach the task at
hand with just pure logic, unmoved by the endercurrents of opinion, bias, trauma,
or longing. Uh. You know, part of the the the
issue here is that science itself, with the scientific method

(14:13):
as its backbone, it's kind of a perfect engine, right
uh and and we're it's flawed operators. So perhaps you
know what we need here if would look at like
the Dune universe, we need like Mentat scientists, um or
we would need Dounyane scientists or bodhisatvas of scientific inquiry.
What do you mean, Duniane? What is that? Oh? They're

(14:33):
a there are people that are kind of like Mentats
and m are Scott Baker's Second Apocalypse saga. So they've
been able to just really through just generations and generations
of selective breeding and uh and and personal training, they've
managed to enter the two to breed a people that

(14:53):
are completely in the now, completely in control of their
of their soul and their mind states. So they're not
governed by uh, you know, past concerns, and when they
encounter people that are not douniating, they can just completely
manipulate them because they sort of stand outside of that path.
Humans engineered to no longer have preferences to only be

(15:14):
computers sort of. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And but that's
the other thing. Maybe what we need is an advanced hypercomputer,
some sort of you know, super AI that could do
all of the science that could that could be science
without the human concerns. Yeah, but we don't have that
right now. We just have the humans with some help
from the computers. Right. So today, the main topic that

(15:37):
we're going to be talking about is the idea of
empiricism and falsifiability in science. And we're gonna get to
what those what falsifiability means in a second, but also
about whether we have entered a phase in science where
there is room for a concept to known as post empiricism.
And if that sounds crazy to you, we will explain

(15:58):
what the arguments are just a bit. But we should
bring it back to the history of this demarcation problem.
How do you separate the science from the pseudoscience? And
one of the most common answers given by scientists today
would be traceable back to the twentieth century philosopher of
science Carl Popper So who was Carl Popper. Popper was
an Austrian British philosopher generally regarded as one of the

(16:21):
twentieth centuries greatest philosophers of science, and he identified demarcation
as the chief problem in the philosophy of science. Again,
how to judge science separated from from pseudoscience, separate the
sin from the virtue? Here to draw a really firm
line in the sand that we can stick by and
judge everything accordingly. And he thought he came up with

(16:42):
an answer to the problem, right, Yeah, yeah, he thought
he came up with with a pretty solid answer. And really,
I was reading about his life like he's stuck to
his guns, like towards the end of his life, you know,
he had he had he had plenty of critics who said, actually,
this doesn't work, blah blah blah. We'll get into the
specifics in a second. But he was devoted and he
would he spent his time either clarifying what he had

(17:04):
said or shooting down his critics. So, yeah, he's stuck
to his guns on this. But what was his answer?
How can you tell the difference between science and pseudoscience?
What qualifies something as real science? Yeah? What is what?
Is the litmus test. Right. The answer he gave is falsifiability.
So what does that mean? So, according to Popper, in

(17:26):
order for a proposition right or wrong, to be scientific
in nature, it has to be falsifiable, meaning you have
to be able to describe empirical results, test results in
the real world that would show the proposition to be false.
And then in order to strengthen a theory, to build
confidence in it, you have to continually seek these exceptions

(17:48):
to your rule. You have to keep looking for ways
to break your theory, and you have to fail to
attain them over and over. Yeah, and this means there
has to be such thing as a critical test for
any given proposition proposition in order for it to be
scientific in nature. Right. And so let's give some examples
in science just throughout a theory what the rule is,

(18:10):
and then explain how how could you falsify it? So
here's one. Einstein's special theory of relativity says the speed
of light and a vacuum is the same for all observers. Now,
if you could get people in spaceships moving at different
speeds to measure the speed of light and a vacuum
and get different results than special relativity is wrong. It's falsified.
The theory is, in principle falsifiable. Another one would be

(18:34):
how about common descent uh. Common descent says that all
life on Earth is related and it evolved from a
single organism known as the last universal common ancestor or LUCA.
So if we looked at the genomes of plants and
animals and bacteria, all the different kingdoms of life, and
we found that they had all completely different genes and

(18:55):
use different genetic tools to accomplish the same basic survival
tasks like say, uh, metabolism, metabolizing sugars or something, this
would probably falsify common descent. It would make it look
like the kingdoms of life had multiple different origins. But
that's not what we find. So there there is support
for common descent. And here's one example that's often was

(19:15):
often touted by Paper himself. So astronomers of the nineteenth
century looked to the the the orbit of Uranus. Okay,
something seemed a bit off here, So two separate astronomers
they pointed out that the orbit of uran Is could
be explained via Newtonian physics as being caused by a
seventh and previously unknown planet, which of course turns out

(19:38):
to be Neptune. Astronomers subsequently discover Neptune, and it's exactly
where these two different astronomers predicted that it would be.
So Papa argued that in this Newton's theory was subjected
to a critical test and it passed. But critics would
have a different view of this. Critics such as uh

(19:59):
immor Octose point out that if they'd been in error,
if the if the two scientists here had been wrong,
if we hadn't found Neptune exactly where it is, we
wouldn't have thrown out Newtonian physics, right, We would have
looked for other possible culprits, any of the number of
reasons that those of that their their their theory here

(20:20):
could have been wrong. So it was hardly a test
of Newtonian physics at all. The falsification corroboration disjunction might
very well just be too simplistic. Yeah, and that's true
that there are plenty of criticisms of the poparian is
that the word poparian the falsification criteria in the philosophy

(20:41):
of science. But but this has been one of the
big ones that people have have latched onto over the
past century. Now to continue exploring falsification. On the contrary,
imagine what it's like to have a proposition where you
can't come up with any in principle empirical test that
would provide strong evidence against it. If you have something

(21:03):
like that, this is not a good thing. So imagine
a psychic medium claims to get information from the spirit world. Okay, well,
well let's come up with some tests for this. Let's say,
let's test the information that he's getting from the spirit
world and find out if it accurately reflects information about
dead people that he wouldn't have been able to know.
He can always say, well, actually, wait a minute, my

(21:25):
powers aren't going to work in the presence of the
negative energy created by skeptics. Uh so, well, well, maybe
we can put some believers in place and blind them
to the test and see if you're getting accurate information.
The psychic could still say, well, wait a minute, there
are also malicious spirits who are responsible for feeding me
incorrect information. Uh So, in the end, there is no

(21:48):
evidence that could really count against his powers. Anything that
could count against it is explained away. Yeah, you can
see this with a lot of supernatural ideas, Like one
of the big ones of core one that I often
think about is the hand of God. Uh. Analogy here, So,
if God exists outside of our universe, all right, if

(22:10):
he's outside of our universe, we can't really do anything
to disapprove or prove, right, because he's not a part
of the observable universe that we can test and we
can measure. Now, it's been argued that if the hand
of God then reaches into our universe to do things
you know, uh, you know, create life, turn a city,
to solve whatever, then that hand has to interact with

(22:33):
our universe. It has to interact with atoms and molecules,
and therefore we would be able to measure a supernatural presence,
a presence from the outside reaching into our own by
the way it moved our molecules are atoms our world.
Oh okay, so that makes it sound like the presence
of supernatural interaction should be in theory testable. But when

(22:54):
you bring that up, people because because then you say
when we've never observed that, people will say, oh, well,
he doesn't have have to he or she does not
have to move the molecules. And then but then you're
just saying, oh, well, then they don't have to obey
any of the laws, and so it's super untestable. Right.
You're removing all possible conditions that could falsify what you're claiming. Right.

(23:14):
It kind of becomes like an argument between kindergarteners about
who just blasted who with a laser gun on the playground,
Like they can both deny that they've been vaporized by
a laser gun based on, uh, you know, increasingly preposterous
ideas about how the laser gun worked and what kind
of imaginary armor they were wearing. Right, But of course,
theories that are unfalsifiable in nature don't necessarily just appeal

(23:39):
to the paranormals, psychics and you know, ghosts and aliens
and stuff like that. You could also have secular, unfalsifiable theories.
How about this one, We are living inside a computer simulation.
Oh yeah, I love this one. Now, there might be
some ways that smart people could come up with to
test whether or not this is true. You could say, well,
you know, on a computer simulation, we'd expect to find X.

(24:02):
If we don't find X, that's evidence against it. Maybe,
But as far as I know, there's no test you
could perform to falsify the statement that we're living in
a computer simulation. There's no way to prove this isn't correct,
and thus it's just sort of like one of those things.
Well that's interesting to think about, but it seems unscientific
in nature, because if we're in a perfect simulation, we're

(24:24):
in a perfect simulation, and how would you possibly see
outside of it? It's um, it's kind of like this. Uh.
There's a fabulous description of human sight that was related
to me over the weekend, and that's the idea that
when you look at something with your through your vision um,
you're essentially regarding a timeline of the evolution of human vision.

(24:46):
So the corners of your eyes, you you're encountering just
blurry shapes, less color, less detail, and as you move
in towards the center of your eye, that's where you
can actually make out the details and and and very
precise movements and changes and and so it's a it's
a timeline that converges at the center. But then that

(25:07):
makes it kind of difficult, if not impossible, to envision
things further along in the timeline because it's not a
linear system. You know, huh, it's a it's it's closed
to us. I guess if that makes sense. That's a
very interesting statement. I've never heard that before. Yeah, yeah,
I keep keep thinking about it because it's I think

(25:28):
it's appliable to a lot of things, a lot of
topics concerning the limits of our of our observation, the
limits of our of our experience, completely unrelated side note.
Did you know that if you have people hold up
colored flags at the very edge of your vision, you
will not be able to tell what color they are? Oh? Yeah,

(25:48):
well that makes sense because, to go with the timeline analogy,
you are seeing out of your corner. How you're seeing
with a very primitive form of vision. But we have
the illusion that the corners of our eyes have color.
To that, oh yeah, when you look, Yeah, my peripheral
vision has just as much color as the center of
my vision. You can test this and show it to
be false. That statement is falsifiable and has been falsified,

(26:08):
because when you hold up these red flags at the
very edge of your vision, you can't tell the difference
between red, blue orange. Try it out. Yeah, yeah, no
matter what your memory says, because your mind is up
stitching it all together into some form that makes sense
at least, you know, at a glance. Okay, so we've
got this criterion here for for the demarcation problem. Real
science is falsifiable. It makes predictions, and it says, if

(26:33):
this were true, my theory would be false. Ideas that
don't conform to this are in our experience, in our experience,
incredibly annoying to interrogate. And also I would say, in
our experience, do not generate accurate predictions, technologies or new knowledge. Yeah. Yeah,
because if it's just if it's an idea that you
can't test, you can't prove, you can't do experiments on it,

(26:54):
all you can do is just sort of is either
nod along or shake your head, you know, kind of
conduct any experiments and learn something more about the the
the inner workings of reality. Yeah. One last distinction I
want to make before we start to get to this
weird world of the idea of post empiricism. So there's
another type of empirical theory of science that's simply a

(27:16):
coral area I would say, a falsification, and that's verification.
And this is actually the older theory. So it's they're
both empirical they're really two halves of the same coin, right,
But with verification, you make a positive prediction and then
you test to see if that's the case. So my
prediction is that all cows on earth are brown. Um,

(27:39):
so you go out and look, and let's say you
find some brown cows. Oh, what do you know? My
theory is correct. So you can sort of see the
problem with this. You can keep testing and looking for
brown cows and finding brown cows, and if you were
to regard these the fact that you keep finding brown
cows as an evidence that your theory is correct. Instead,

(28:02):
what you should be doing is looking for non brown cows,
and you keep looking for them, and eventually, if you
find a non brown cow, then your theory has been falsified. Right.
It's like finding a black swan. Yeah, and then it
changes what you know about swans as they actually exist. Now,
of course, the fact that all the statement that all
cows are brown is wrong. That is wrong, even if

(28:24):
it is formulated in such a way that it could
be falsified. An unfalsifiable version of the same idea would
be cows that appear brown to all observers and instruments
are nevertheless not really brown. That that is worse than
being wrong. It's not even wrong, it's unfalsifiable. But so

(28:45):
one takeaway from this, of course, is that you never
actually verify a theory under the criterion of falsifiability. There's
no such thing as one confidence that the theory is correct.
You just keep building up higher and higher levels of
confidence every time you try to find an exception, every
time you try to falsify it, and you can't. Yeah,

(29:05):
So that I mean, in that sense, the boundaries of
scientific understanding are constantly shifting, the constantly changing um at
least you know, in the realms beyond like extremely verified fact. Right,
But his red wine good for you? Is coffee good
for you? This is a line that is that is
continually changing. Right, And that's a problem because that that

(29:27):
question is not well defined. What do you mean good
for me on average? How do you compare the different
goods versus bads? Goods and bad What are studied by science?
All right, we're gonna take a quick break, but when
we come back, we're going to get into post empiricism. Okay,

(29:50):
So we've established that some scientists and philosophers of science
have latched onto this idea of falsifiability or at least
some version of impure coal confirmation, as as the criterion
you use to tell science from pseudoscience. But are there
any scientific problems that would lead a non quack that

(30:11):
would lead a respectable scientist who does real work with
with real data, to propose a non falsifiable hypothesis. Actually,
there are some cases where we have very smart, very
respectable scientists who are doing work on hypotheses that are
widely agreed to be non falsifiable, at least today. And

(30:33):
so how about fundamental physics. What's at the bottom of
our physical theory of the universe? Well, depends on who
you ask, But if you ask a certain portion of
the scientific community and the philosophic community, they will say
string is at the bottom of everything. Yes, And we're
of course talking about string theory. Now, I know what

(30:55):
you're thinking out that are you thinking, Hey, Robert and Joe,
I didn't sign up for string theory this episode? While
you're getting some string theory. But well, we're gonna blow
through just a very quick definition of what it is,
a reminder of what it is so that we can proceed.
And uh, we're we're gonna be fairly limited in this.
I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're not gonna go too
deep on this. Uh. I mean, you can really leave

(31:18):
it at just imagining a cartoon character and a sweater
and what happens when someone pulls on the threat at
the bottom of everything unravels. That is true, that is
the full scientific definition. But but to go a little deeper. Um, okay,
So you have particle physicists to define elementary particles or
fundamental particles as the smallest building blocks in the universe.
In other words, particles such as leptons and quarks have

(31:40):
no substructure. There As small as it gets, you can't
split them up. Now, that's not the case for string
theorists to think we need to venture deeper or smaller
than our current technology allows. So they propose that each
so called fundamental particle fundamental particle actually contains a tiny, vibrating,
one dimensional loop of string. The vibration of the string
determines the charge and mass of the greater particle. So

(32:04):
superstring theories take this idea and build the entire universe
from the bottom up. Uh. And it's it's a challenging task,
and that's why we speak of string theories in the plural,
because there are several different string theories that attempt to
make it all work. At least ten dimensions are called
for um. A lot of maths physicists proposed that any

(32:26):
dimensions beyond time and visible space are folded up out
of sight into these you know, very complex, uh extra
dimensional shapes that you often see are rendered with computer
graphics on string theory articles, tiny extra dimensions that that
that we can't even measure. They're they're just too small
for us to perceive, crawling with shadow creatures that come

(32:46):
out to grab children. Um, so and and is and
is that that what indicates a superstring theory is still developing,
meaning that physicists continue to work out the kinks in
the individual string theories, but they're eventually What they're aiming
to do is is fulfill Einstein's unrealized goal of unifying
general relativity with quantum theory. And that's why string theory

(33:09):
is also sometimes called a theory of everything because it
would serve someday as a foundation for all future scientists,
scientific discovery, and innovation. The idea that it is an
incomplete section in this grand bridge. Yeah, so another way
string theories often characterized is that that it's a unification
as it attempts to bring together macrophysics, things like relativity,

(33:33):
you know that happen on huge energies and and and scales,
with microphysics, the stuff in the quantum world, you know,
very very small. Right now, we have strong theories of
microphysics that explain very well what we see at those scales,
and we have strong theories of relativity that explain very
well what we see, you know, with gravity at huge scales.

(33:54):
But they just don't mesh together very well. And so
string theory would attempt to explain all those things with
one underlying theory that that implies both of them. And
in reality, the theory is just a set of mathematical models,
right It's mathematical models showing the behavior of these strings
and how they could produce the effects of the universe

(34:16):
we see at these different scales. But there's a problem,
right String physics phenomena are too tiny to observe even
with our most powerful experimental instruments. They can't be found
by our particle colliders or anything else we're likely to
build in the near future. So we can make a
mathematical string theory model that very beautifully explains everything we

(34:41):
already know, but we can't use it to predict any
new physical results that we'd be able to detect and
use to confirm or falsify it. So that's sort of
a problem. Right, Is this still science? Wait a minute, now,
If we're just coming up with mathematical instruments that explain

(35:01):
what we already know but don't make predictions that we
can experimentally test, what is it science? And is it useful? Yeah?
It's it sounds like it's like putting the car in
if not park, then at least neutral, you know, it's
it's going to stop moving after a while. Right right? Uh,
here's another one. How about cosmology? Oh yeah, what's the

(35:23):
ultimate nature of the universe. It's a big question with
big answers, big answers that we often cannot test, um
generally cannot test and going you on one side just
say the existence of God or God's but also you
get into multiverse theory, the idea that our universe is
just one of many and essentially the library of Babbel

(35:45):
right right, yeah, so it's that movie Multiplicity. Wait, what
was that movie? Is that the one one more jetly
kills all the other jet leads to game power. No,
I think that's the one that's a really good one. Though,
now I'm thinking, what's the one that has lots of
Michael Keaton? Yeah, that the clone Michael Keaton's I think
it's multiplicity, Okay, yeah, no, no, no no, I was confusing

(36:08):
it mentally with virtuosity. The one oh that has with
the Russell Crowe is like a synthetic human clone. Yeah,
and Denzel Washington, Yeah, yeah, each other. I just remember
he had like there's a blue blood or something like that. Well, anyway,
like string theory, there's this idea of the multiverse that's

(36:28):
pretty much untestable. It's but it could be a very
elegant outworking of the data we already have. So we
have a bunch of observations. We say, if there were
many many universes, it would explain some of the things
we see. But we can't make a prediction based on
the belief in the many many universes that we can test.

(36:51):
At least, there's not a clear one. In fact, I
think I have read some physicists suggesting that multiverse could
maybe be potentially tested in theory based on something out
spacetime geometry. But I think that's an ongoing debate that
I don't fully understand. Yeah, a lot of this kind
of it boils down to the prospect of building a
bridge into the darkness, and how far into the darkness

(37:14):
are you willing to build that bridge accepting that the
necessary substructure will be there? Right? Okay, Well, in this case,
if we are talking about science and you know, real
science and maybe multiverse cosmology or string theory being except
some people would have a problem with that statement exactly. No,

(37:35):
no, no no, I'm saying, if we consider these things science, uh,
it seems like we need to sort of revise what
are demarcation problem solution is right, assuming we were starting
with false fiability, which a lot of modern philosophers of
science probably wouldn't um. And so here's where we get
into the idea of post empiricism, the idea of so

(37:59):
just meaning after empiricism, after only being based on observations
and physical tests. And I want to talk about a
theoretical physicist turned philosopher named Richard Davitt who has studied
and written in favor of the concept of post empiricism.
On behalf of string theory, and he he had this

(38:19):
interview with three AM magazine that was published in July.
He but he also wrote a book called String Theory
and the Scientific Method, and he tries to make a
case for a new sort of philosophy of evaluating the
scientific merits of theories that isn't just based on empirical testing. Uh,
that sounds kind of crazy, right, But let's see what

(38:41):
he has to say. So, you've got string theory. You've
got this problem that you can paint a self consistent
picture of the mathematical properties of strings. And if they existed,
they'd answer a lot of questions, right, they would help
unify our view of physics. But there's currently no way
we know of to directly text strings or their effects.

(39:02):
So in what sense his string theory different from saying
invisible acid gremlins push all the particles in the universe
around to produce the effects we interpret as microphysics and
general relativity. Is it any better? And and Davitt would
argue that these are not equally valid claims, that string
theory is actually much better as a scientific claim, even

(39:25):
if it's not empirically testable. And the thing is that
that feels like a true statement, right, Yeah, but not
everyone would agree. So instead, Davitt thinks that even in
cases where you can't falsify a theory empirically, you can
establish confidence in the theory with the use of philosophical

(39:45):
and probabilistic arguments. Sort of about the research program that
produced the theory. It's sort of a meta science. It's
judging the quality of science by the scientific situation that
create at it. Okay, so let's try to give some
examples of the arguments he would give on behalf of

(40:05):
something like string theory. One argument is the lack of
alternative theories. Okay, so it kind of goes back to
Sherlock Holmes logic. Yeah, it's it's the only game in town.
Davitt says, string theory is the only theory that integrates
into one overall theory our topical understanding of high energy
physics based on gauge field theory, and our understanding of

(40:28):
cosmology based on general relativity. So he's saying that there
just aren't any other theories that explain all this stuff.
It's the only one we've come up with that seems
viable and do. It also argues that in the past,
when we had no alternative to a consistent theory, that
theory was often later shown to be correct. So there's

(40:50):
sort of a precedent for saying, well, when scientists are
working on a question and they come up with a
theory that answers the question, even if it's not empirically
testable at the time, we later learned that they were
right if it was the only theory they could come
up with. Right, Yeah, and that makes sense, right, you
to proceed to actually push forward, sometimes you have to

(41:15):
envision what the reality may be. You have to create
this model and then see how it plays out over
time exactly. So he also says, look, it has proven
conceptually useful. That's a second argument. So Dobvitt suggests that
string theorists have given physicists insights into other problems in

(41:36):
physics that they weren't originally setting out to solve when
the theory was conceived, So it explains more than it
was originally meant to explain. That seems like another good
tick in the evidence column. In other words, it's not
predicting a physical outcome that we tested, but it's sort
of yielding some mathematical results. That that that fit together

(41:58):
in interesting ways. And then the last major argument he
gives is sort of that the way I would put
it is that it grows from proper scientific soil. You know,
it's not like saying saying acid gremlins. That it comes
out of a research project of high energy physics. And
this research project of high energy physics has generated all

(42:21):
kinds of other ideas that have been testable empirically and
have been accurate. All right, well, all three of these
are making sense. He seems logical, sure, And he gives
another example from the past. I think it's when we
mentioned earlier, but he says, you know, if if you
look at the past, what about atomists, people who thought
that the matter in the world was made of atoms?

(42:43):
According to Devitt, scientists thought that the world was made
of atoms long before they had any way of experimentally
confirming predictions of atomic theory. Of course, we have those
experiments now, but atomic theory was the only serious theory
of matter on the table, so there were no altern natives.
It yielded insights that it didn't set out to yield, Like,

(43:04):
it explained more than it was designed to explain. That's
his second case with string theory, and he says it
emerged from a research program that had success in making
other predictions that were empirically verified, you know, not from
It didn't come from demonology. It came from chemistry and physics.
So that's interesting to me. Now we're going to get

(43:26):
into some serious criticisms of this way of thinking, but
this does kind of broaden the picture and suggest that
maybe our way of thinking about what's a good scientific
idea should be more complicated than just saying like, well,
it's something where you can do a physical test with
an observable result, and you can say what would falsify it?

(43:47):
And you show that that's not the case. Yeah, it,
you know, And I can't help but think of examples
such as geocentricism, uh, heliocentricism, you know, in terms of
all of you know, certainly false theories that we eventually realized,
oh well, the Earth isn't the center of the universe,
the Sun is at the center of the universe, and

(44:08):
yet all those theories were still they were still useful
models thinking about the structure of the Solar system before
we really had a more nuanced understanding of what it was.
But with with something like string theory, it's such a
complex and robust uh creation. You know that it was

(44:28):
such a robust theory that it seems like there's there's
much more on the line, and there's much more room
to potentially create something that is not so Yeah, well,
and with string theory also, should we treat string theory
differently than other theories because it's supposedly a final theory,
you know, if it's the ultimate theory of matter in

(44:49):
the universe, should there be different rules for assessing it
than there would be for assessing you know, some theory
of gene selection or some other you know, some theory
in in biology, g or regular chemistry or something. Because
it doesn't set itself up to evolve. And of course hindsight,
but you look back at heliocentricism and you can see
its place in an evolution of thought. But but certainly

(45:12):
when people are arguing strength theory, they're not saying, well,
this is strength theory and hopefully we'll work up to
wool theory and nylon theory, you know, or whatever. Right,
like you said, it's it's it's it's argued as a
as a as a as a fix to the end
of the line. But yeah, that's that's a very good
point you make about heliocentrism, because it's like, um, it

(45:35):
was less wrong. That was the important thing, was that
it was less wrong than geocentrism, even though it was
still wrong, and it still allowed you to have a
pretty accurate understanding of the of immediate solar mechanics. Yeah,

(45:55):
so to me, there does seem to be something interesting
going on in what Davitt is saying, Like it's not um,
it's not just a bunch of junk. Then again, there
might be limits to how far you can extend these
ideas he's propounding in in how you're going to define science.
It almost makes it seem like it would have to
be a case by case scenario. You'd have to take

(46:17):
him on a case by case basis, and that that
means there's no absolute rule. It thinks there's just some
guidelines and then we have to weigh in on it. Yeah,
so I want to read some some criticisms. One of
them is the theoretical physicist Sabine Hassenfelder. She responded to
this interview that I mentioned, and first of all, she
says flatly, post empirical science is an oxymoron, just flat

(46:42):
out that there is no such thing. Now, David actually
defends himself by saying that he doesn't advocate quote post
empirical science, just post empirical theory assessment, which is honest,
I have to admit as a distinction which I have
failed to grasp the significance of. But well, it's maybe

(47:02):
there's something there. But anyway, Hassenfelder, her response to this,
had a really good quote that I wanted to read
that I thought sums up the attitude of the critics
of post empiricism pretty well. She said, quote this non
empirical theory assessment, while important, can however only be means
to the end of an eventual empirical assessment without making

(47:26):
contact to observation. A theory isn't useful to describe the
natural world, not part of the natural sciences, and not physics.
These insights that Davitt speaks of are thus not assessments
that can ever validate an idea as being good to
describe nature, and a theory based on non empirical assessment

(47:47):
does not belong in the natural sciences. So I think
she's acknowledging that maybe there is something to non empirical
theory assessment ownly in the sense that it might help
bridge us along until we can get to a time
when there is empirical confirmation. Maybe if we can eventually

(48:08):
come up with ways of testing the predictions of string theory.
But and but if we don't ever get there, then
this assessment is type of assessment is useless. Right, And then,
of course, how do you get to the point where
you can test it if you're not working towards that point,
you know, you don't just say, oh, accidentally, we're now
in a position to test out this theory that we

(48:28):
refused to give credence earlier. Now, another voice on this
matter that we came across is a cow Tech physicist,
Sean Carroll, who wrote on edge dot org answering the
question what scientific idea is ready for retirement? His answer falsifiability. Um,
you know, he he sticks by empiricism, but once a

(48:51):
different empirical paradigm, not post empiricism, but post falsifiability. Simply put,
and this is a quote from from his paper, refusing
to contemplate their possible existence on the grounds of some
a priori principle, even though they might play a crucial
role in how the world works is as non scientific

(49:12):
as it gets. Yeah, and I think Carol makes a
good point. They're like, so there may in fact be
strings at the bottom of reality, you know, matter, the
universe may be based on strings and and membranes. Uh.
And there may in fact be a multiverse. There may
be other universes out there and stuff like that. It

(49:34):
doesn't make sense for us to say, well, we can't
entertain that possibility because it doesn't fit with our model
of the solution to the demarcation problem. You know, He's
saying we should have we should be coming up with
ways to assess these things, even if it doesn't classically
fit the philosophy of science, definition of science. And of

(49:57):
course Carol, he posits a couple of different criteria, so
he he still wants to stick with empiricism, but he
proposes I think that that it must be what definite
and empirical rather than falsifiable, so that it has to
be a theory that is scientific in nature, has to
be well defined, it's described in a clear, unambiguous way,

(50:19):
and it also has to interact with empirical data in
some way, like it has to take into account what
we know empirically about the universe, which, of course, like
string theory and the multiverse do, they explain what we
already know. The problem is they don't make predictions about
what we could know in the future that can be tested, Right,

(50:39):
So you couldn't you couldn't use it as a way
to prop up your own hollow earth theories. Yeah, alright,
So what else do we have here in terms of criticism, agreement, etcetera.
In the stream wars Well, I've came across a Nature
comment piece from December by the mathematician George Ellis and
the physicist Joe Silk called scientific method defend the integrity

(51:02):
of physics, and they were taking a stand against post empiricism,
or against at least some uses of it. Uh so
that they start off by saying that, you know, some
scientists now argue that if a theory is quote sufficiently
elegant and explanatory, it doesn't have to be tested experimentally.
And some examples they give our string theory, the kaleidoscopic multiverse,

(51:26):
the many worlds interpretation of quantum reality. That's one, you know,
So you've got the the equations of quantum physics. We
those are very well tested. We know they're accurate, But
what do they mean when you have the you know,
the supposed collapse of the way of function or whatever,
What do they mean really happens in reality when a
probabilistic wave function event happens. Well, one way of interpreting

(51:50):
it is saying, Okay, every time there's a quantum event
that could go one way or another, reality actually splits
into different realities and you have different worlds or both
are true, and now we're in the multiverse, right, Yeah,
different type of multiverse, the many worlds quantum reality multiverse.
Another one would be pre Big Bang concepts. They say,

(52:10):
you know, trying to do math about what happened before
the Big Bang? If that makes any sense? Yeah, like
what happened before the initial singularity of all existence? Like
was it in a giant's pocket to some marvels on
the back of a turtle? Yeah, exactly that. Uh. And
so they say, if you if you d couple science

(52:30):
from experimental false falsification quote, theoretical physics risks becoming a
no man's land between mathematics, physics, and philosophy that does
not truly meet the requirements of any i love that quote.
That's a great quote from from the article. Yeah, does
it become this own purely? You know, does it become

(52:52):
just an abstraction? Right? Has it left the realm of
the natural sciences without yet just becoming a philosophical discuss
shan or or abstract mathematics in in truth. So they
make a couple of specific examples about string theory where
they disagree with with Davitt's arguments um, But then they
also go on to say, you know, look, history is

(53:15):
full of examples of elegant and compelling theories ideas that
lead scientists in the wrong direction. They cite Ptolemy's geocentric universe,
Lord Kelvin's vortex theory of the atom, Hoyle's steady state universe,
you know, the the eternal unchanging universe. And in the
end they say, quote, in our view, the issue boils

(53:37):
down to clarifying one question, what potential observational or experimental
evidence is there that would persuade you that the theory
is wrong and lead you to abandon it. If there
is none, it is not a scientific theory. So here
they're staking out basically with falsification. They're saying it's got
to be falsifiable in in a testable physical way, or

(53:59):
it is not science. This is not meeting the definition.
And they also mentioned some practical considerations that that are
worth considering. One of them is that they say, you know,
even if there's some merit to post empirical theory assessment
in niche subject areas where we can't perform experiments like
string theory and stuff, public discussion of this could have

(54:22):
disastrous consequences. It could cause confusion and undermine public confidence
in h in science generally, and especially in politically charged
scientific ideas like climate change, evolution, vaccines, GMO safety, all
of which are empirically based. But if you start introducing
this idea but what waits some science isn't based on

(54:43):
empirical testing, you're going to hurt people's confidence in the science.
That is. Yeah, it ceases to become this this pure
engine of learning and knowledge and truth and becomes this
more abstract thing. Great, people you're always asking what he
was driving it? Yeah, people are asking the wait a minute,
so what is just people doing weird intellectual experiments in

(55:04):
their ivory towers that can't be confirmed or denied by
by experiments. Um And then so they go on to
say also that claiming the theory is too good for
testing opens the door to two genuine pseudoscientists who would
claim the same thing about their ideas. My my psychic
powers are are just too elegant and too well explanatory,

(55:25):
you know, they explain the facts too perfectly to be
suggested subjected to this you know, prediction problem. Yeah, this
is kind of the scenario. You get into the hand
of god argument or conversation that one might have with
with someone where you can you throw out the criticisms
just you point out to where it wouldn't work. But
then they can always they can always change the argument

(55:47):
until it's it's there's no way to possibly refute it right,
And so they end by saying the imperimeter of science
should be awarded only to a theory that is testable.
Only then can we defend science from attack. And to me,
these seem like concerns that are a very important part
of the conversation about science communication. It's almost more about
what you and I do, Robert, But they don't seem

(56:10):
especially relevant to me, at least to the internal conversation
between scientists about what kind of work in physics is
worth doing, and how much confidence we should have in
ideas like string theory. I don't know what you think
about that, but it seems to me like that that's
kind of irrelevant. That's more just a public policy conversation. Yeah,

(56:30):
I would, I would agree, though, I mean, when it
comes to reading about physics, I have to admit I
would probably choose to read about theoretical physics before I
would read anymore about experimental experimental things. Yeah. Um, And
of course we should point out that not all theoretical
physics is is removed from experiment. I mean, I think,

(56:51):
I think most theoretical physics, you know, they're interacting with
particle colliders and and and all the experiments that we're
out there doing gathering data on. But yeah, I don't know,
I don't know what you're supposed to do in these
cases where where it's not just that string theorists decided
that they didn't want to test their their theories. You

(57:12):
know that they are by necessity dealing with a part
of reality that we can't access experimentally. That that's just
how it is. They didn't design it that way, you
know what I mean, Like, they didn't pick it. It's
just a problem with our powers. And another thing I
think I would acknowledge is that it seems like almost

(57:33):
all of these people who are critics of the the
idea of post empirical theory assessment, you know, using these
criteria other than physical testing, acknowledge that there's something to it.
They seem to say, okay, yeah, they would probably admit
that string theory has more going for it than the
acid Grimlin's hypothesis. There So there is something to the

(57:57):
non empirical uh theory assessment. They just don't seem to
say that it's enough to call it science. Yeah, you know,
I can't help me. Be reminded in all this of
nineteenth century German philosopher Frederick of Wilhelm Joseph Schelling's Natural
Philosophy Um Philosophy of Nature in German um. And this

(58:18):
is a concept um he developed as a sort of
augmentation to science that would allow science to investigate the
human spirit, because he saw nature or the force nature
and the human spirit or the forced geist as the
two great opposing forces in cosmos, with the human mind
at the center of everything. So nature, according to two Shilling,

(58:40):
is the visible spirit of the invisible spirit of the mind.
But again, the mind is very much at the center
of the equation um. Now he was this This concept
was attacked for, among other things, lack of empirical orientation,
and indeed a lot of it seems to hinge on
the investigation of invisible the comprehension of the scientific getting

(59:03):
unverifiable through the lens of something at least linked to
the substance of science. So it's it's hard to I
think I thought of that a lot when I was
reading over some of the material, because it seems like
a good example of sort of bad post empirical science. Yeah,
the idea that you're gonna you're gonna, you're gonna take,

(59:25):
you're gonna go as far as science will take, and
then you're just gonna completely extrapolate it into the unseen um.
But then the counter argument is, then, how is that different?
How is that ultimately different from something like string theory. Yeah,
I mean we're back to the demarcation problem, right, Yeah, like,
what is the rule we're using to tell the difference?
I sense a difference to a sense that there's something

(59:47):
much more respectable about string theory and multiverse cosmology than
there is about the the invisible spirit um, but it's
hard to articulate exactly what that is though, though I
would say that Davits criteria are somewhat useful in that regard.
They give you some criteria for saying, Okay, we're not
running a test, but here are some characteristics of these

(01:00:09):
theories that do seem to make them probabilistically and historically
more likely to be correct than just gremlins or invisible spirits.
You know, it reminds me of something else, and that
is the the Ian and Banks Culture books, which I
know would bring up a lot but but but he
managed to fit a lot of science into these, at

(01:00:31):
least in the earlier books. It's established that in this uh,
in this culture known as the culture, you have all
these AI minds that are really ruling everything, that rule
these giant warships, and they make all the decisions, and
they they do all the heavy thinking and heavy lifting
for the humans and humanoids that make up the culture.

(01:00:51):
But they keep the human humans around and they occasionally
have the humans, you know, engaging and very important roles.
And part of this UH, it's it's it's a proposed
is because the humans will occasionally make leaps in judgment
or in theory that the machines do not cannot, Which

(01:01:11):
comes back to that that idea that I put forth
earlier about how if you had a pure computer, a pure,
pure logical entity doing the science, Um, would there be
limitations to that? Would would there be this place where
you would need a non empirical jump in logic that
only a human who is a bound and shackled to

(01:01:33):
their prior beliefs and their philosophies, that only they could
make what a what a skeptical engine? You know, a
computer of scientific investigation not be able to make intuitive speculations.
You would have to have the the the Devil's advocate computer, right, Yeah,
throw weird ideas out there and then allow for testing.

(01:01:56):
Oh this this veil of testing. And uh so, one
more thing I wanted to mention before the end of this.
I was actually inspired to do this episode by reading
a really good article on this whole subject of you know,
post empiricism and falsifiability in science by the philosopher of
science Massimo Peliucci that he wrote in Eon magazine, which

(01:02:18):
is always one of our favorites. Around her and their
nonprofit now so if you really like what they're doing
over there, you can donate to the cause, by the way. Yeah,
but uh so Peleucci mates makes a point in his
approach to this topic. He wonders if what if science
is not it can't be demarcated in a way that

(01:02:40):
a word like triangle can. So there's a word triangle
that has a very clear definition, has what he would
call quote necessary and jointly sufficient properties, and that just
means it has a description which includes everything that could
possibly be a triangle and rules out everything that is
not a triangle. It has three angles that add up

(01:03:01):
to degrees um perfect description of all triangles and nothing else.
What if science is simply not like that? There aren't
statements that are a perfect description of science and nothing else.
And rather science is more a concept that is based
on what Wittgenstein would call family resemblances, in that it's

(01:03:25):
a term like game. Now, could you come up with
a definition or a description of what games are that
includes everything that's a game and excludes everything that's not
a game? Yeah, this is actually something that comes up
a lot when I play games, such as my argument
that apples what apples to apples apples to apples. Yeah,

(01:03:47):
not a game. Um as fun as the other one is?
What is it with all the awful cards in it?
Cards against Humanity? Also very fun? But not a game
according to you. According to me, some people would say
it's a game. Is chopping would a game? You know?
When I was a kid, I really love chopping wood.
Some people think that as a chore, but I don't know.
I guess it was just fun to swing an axe. Uh, well,

(01:04:09):
certainly that's the thing. You can turn non games into
games by establishing a set of rules for your completion
of that task. Yeah. Yeah, you can turn things that
shouldn't be a game at all into a game. But
you could get a room full of people to have
a list of activities like chopping wood, apples to apples,
a whole bunch of things like that, and say is

(01:04:30):
this a game or is it not? And mostly I
think they'd agree. You know, you'd get general agreement on
the on the use of this term as it applies
to things. And yet we can't come up with this
necessary and jointly sufficient description of what games are. Maybe
science is like that. So in a sense, science is
a thing that would not be able to see itself,
it would not be able to get itself because it

(01:04:52):
itself does not fall into the uh specificity of form
that science requires. That could be I don't know. Um,
I find this topic very interesting because I don't quite
know what the answer is. I'm not sure how I
feel about it. Obviously, I'm not a physicist, so I'm
not I'm not working in these fields like multiverse cosmology

(01:05:14):
and string theory, so I'm not even educated enough in
them to really judge the intrinsic merits of the ideas,
but just accepting that they are very good theoretical solutions. Yeah. Well,
I think this is the that this is the appropriate
feeling to have about it, because we're talking about theories
that take us to the edge of human understanding and

(01:05:34):
extrapolate beyond right and that's that is a place who
I think where we can all agree it's okay to
feel inadequate, It's okay to feel befuddled and unsure, because
that is the nature of the age. Yeah yeah, um
so yeah, I guess in the end, like I, I
sort of see what Dovid is saying, like his his
distinctions do make sense to me. I also see what

(01:05:56):
the critics are saying about that not quite being science,
or at least not science in the same way that
all the science we really care about is. Uh. I
wonder how that should work out in terms of practical
concerns like funding, Like should we be funding using public
money to fund string theory research in the same way

(01:06:18):
that we're funding stuff that is being tested and falsified. Yeah,
I mean it seems to me you often encounter problems
when you start opening up the discussion to the merits
of this particular scientific inquiry versus all the others. You know,
you kind of get into that hole, why are you
doing this when we haven't cured cancer? And then your
answer is like, wow, this is this is theoretical physicist

(01:06:41):
physics here. We weren't going to actually achieve a cure
for cancer, as that's not our area of expertise. Yeah,
Like the the sort of false assumption of a zero
sum game in the investigation of science. This is something
that comes up a lot, you know, as somebody does
a study that has an interesting but not necessarily early
technological result, and people comment under the article, why are

(01:07:04):
they studying this when they could be curing cancer? Right?
As though, what the shrimp on a treadmill scenario, where
it's just become Oh, I can't believe it. Our tax
dollars are paying for shrimps on a treadmill. And then
you ignore the fact that well, it's it's it's still
advancing science. If it's a you know, it's a valid study,
it's just maybe not as as sexy or as a
uh you knows, as obvious an advancement, and you don't

(01:07:27):
even know in the future in what ways it may
inform future technologies and other applications. I mean, that's always
the thing with science. We we don't always know what
the outcomes are going to be of learning something. Yeah,
as this thing called science continues to creep out, sometimes
it is snail's pace, uh, sometimes a bit faster into
the unknown. Alright, So how about you, how do you

(01:07:48):
feel about this particular topic, And do you think the
so called string wars that we're talking about here, do these,
as some critics charge, distract from the real battle that
should be going on against pseudos science and the misuse
of science by various outlets. Is this kind of the
you know, the wars of the of the Seven Kingdoms
that are occurring while the white Walkers of pseudoscience march

(01:08:11):
down from the north. That that is true. Also, I mean,
are are we sitting here arguing about what physicists should
or shouldn't be contemplating? Meanwhile, we've got alternative medicine peddlers
who are at the gates. Yeah, who knows. Uh. We'd
love to hear from all you guys and gals about that.
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