Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Why we do what we do. Welcome
to Why we Do what we do Mini. I'm your
host Abraham.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
And I'm your host Shane.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
We are a psychology podcast. We talk about the things
that humans and non human animals do. And today we're
doing a mini So we're a short psychology podcast, trying
to get this done in fifteen minutes or less. And
you're probably going to desire that even more today because
we're getting into some philosophy, some arguments, some sollipsisms, not really,
(00:45):
but a little bit of rhetoric here, and I don't know,
it's a discussion. It's like we're asking a question that
we hope makes you think a little bit more, a
little bit differently about these things and piques your curiosity.
That's what we're doing.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, And we love curiosity. We love it.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
We love curiosity and asking questions, and that's what we've
been doing on this podcast for several years.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
Indeed, And if you're joining us for the first time,
then welcome. It seems like you are also curious, and
I hope that you continue to seek us out and
explore that curiosity further. And here you're a returning person,
then you definitely are curious and we appreciate you. Thank
you for coming back. And either way, if you like
to support us, you can leave us a rating and
a review like subscribe, tell a friend, join us on Patreon.
(01:27):
I'll talk more about those things at the end of
this discussion, but this is a mini which means we
kind of got to get into it so that we
can get out of there. I'll let you go about
your day, yes, with a little bit more, a little
bit more thoughts going on, something percolating up there. Just
gonna ask the question, So, all right, is there anything
that I forgot or that you'd like to add as
part of our preamble before we jump into our topic.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
D joure no, I think we're ready to go.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Okay, people, buckle in, it's happening. We the collect If Royal.
We people actually know. We it's actually just Shane and I.
We generally take for granted that science is good. Inherently
it's a good and that we should be doing science.
That's the thing we take for granted. And I do
mean we, as in Shane and I. I understand that
(02:14):
there are people who disagree with us, but also most
people do seem to have a general appreciation for science,
like most people seem to have that in some capacity,
in some way.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yes, Yet sometimes it is worth revisiting the discussion about
what is the point of the things we do? And
science is one of those things we do? Science, So
what is the point of science? We're going to unpack
what philosophers have said and propose some different ways to
ask that question that might illustrate the question a little bit.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Better and also therefore illustrates the potential answers a little
bit better.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
So first, if we're asking, if someone's asking, and someone
is asking, not us, but we're asking for the point
of this, someone's asking, what's the point of sci? I
think the first retort to that is, what do you mean?
What is the point of science?
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yeah? What does that mean?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
What does that question mean?
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
There are different ways to ask the question, and those
different ways of asking the question inspire different answers and
different ways to think about what the answer might be.
But I'm jumping ahead just a little bit.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah, I think we can start with what is the
point of science? And probably suggests the point of science
is to discover things? But this further begs the question
what is the point of discovering.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Things exactly like what you sort of regress, like you
keep going. Perhaps the answer is the point is of
science or of discovering things is to chase our curiosity.
But that also then begs a new question, which is
what's the point of our chasing curiosity? And also is
satisfying our curiosity a reasonable purpose to do something? I
(03:51):
think you could easily point to situations where satisfying curiosity
is not a good enough reason to have done the
thing about what you were curious. So maybe in some
cases it is, some cases it isn't. Maybe that's never
a good answer, but you know, again, it does then
ask like what does it mean? What's the point of
chasing our curiosity? How far do we go with that?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Right?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
So, French philosopher August Kompt distrusted that science was even
capable of describing the underlying reality and nature of things,
and instead that the point of science was to make
predictions about things that will happen. That is that the
point of science is in its utility, Yeah, what can accomplish?
Speaker 1 (04:27):
That's essentially what he cared about is like, I don't
really think that you can do what you think you
can do, but you can be helpful. So as long
as you're helpful, you have a purpose. That seemed to
be his orientation to it.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Now.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Francis Bacon and Renee Descartes were both philosophers, and they wrote, essentially,
if you distill down their points, that the point the
purpose of science, The point here is to remove bias
from how we tend to try and describe and understand
things and expose fundamental truths in some capacity. That the
point was to be able to describe things with mathematical precision,
(05:00):
and that is, to them, the point of science is
the ability to develop rules that remain consistent in all circumstances.
That's kind of what describing means here, is like, can
I say something about this phenomenon that will be true
the next time it happens, and the time after that,
and then every variation that might exist about this phenomenon
the way that I've described it always accurately describes what happens,
(05:23):
and in a way also maybe make some predictions about that.
But that's essentially it is like, can I describe this
thing in a way that's really consistent those rules about
what my description they maintain and hold yes.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Now, another way to approach this question is to rephrase
the question what is the utility of science?
Speaker 2 (05:38):
That is, to what end do we do science?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
And, as proposed by Compte, compt to predict things that
will happen, both natural events in the world and the
behavior of other humans and non human animals. Prediction allows
the preparation to benefit maximally from advantagious circumstances and sometimes
to make further predictions.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, so like maybe instead of asking what's the point
of science, you say, what's the utility of science? To
what end do we do this? Like? What are we
trying to get out of this? And when we're talking
about utility, we're not usually talking about ads. Okay, we're
back what we're talking about utility and we're describing like
(06:19):
potentially if you're thinking about it. One of the ways
that we can ask that question instead of like, what's
the point is what's the utility? What do we get
out of it? And this can also refer to not
just like the fact that it can allow us to
predict things that will happen, to make predictions about behavior,
to make more predictions. Es actually, like at one leads
to another, it can also refer to tangible benefits that
science might produce. Medications is something we could get out
(06:42):
of it. That could be utility, medical solutions to health problems,
effective weapons, more effective tools, more effective food production and
food storage and food creation, better construction techniques. There's like
all these other things that we can get out of
the scientific process that essentially reflect it's utility, the kind
of use that we get out of that process, And
(07:03):
maybe that's the point or a way to answer what's
the point of science is like what's the utility of science?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
And another way to approach this is to rephrase the question.
Perhaps instead of asking what is the point of science,
we say it slightly differently, which is why do we
do science? And that is under what conditions do we
do science?
Speaker 1 (07:22):
So, yeah, if we want to say, like, rather than
say what's the point, we say why do we do it?
And when you say why, you can always replace that
with under what circumstances? And that again creates a slightly
different context to think about this. So, under what conditions
do we do science? Often when there's a problem to
be solved, when there's an arms race between warring states,
when we're observing a phenomenon that we don't understand and
(07:44):
we can't seem to be able to explain. Those are
definitely conditions under which people have attempted to do science,
for sure.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, and so in these situations the point of science
is somewhat circumstantial. In all ways, there is some external
motivation and pressure to solve something, either describing produces an
outcome that resolves a problem, to u the most efficient
means of destruction or defense in some cases, and to
describe something satisfactorily enough that people are satisfied with the answer.
So all of those are different kinds of outcomes in
(08:11):
those situations that specific to those circumstances that we're trying
to solve. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Yeah, if we go back to sort of under what
conditions do we do science, like, it addresses some aspect
of those things right now. Of course, simple curiosity has
led to a lot of important discoveries, and see our
episode on the Golden Goose Awards for the list of
some of what those might be. So there's also this
just like people just observe things around them and go
(08:35):
like huh, I wonder how that is or why that is,
or what's going on with that thing? And they just
want to just understand it better, which really means again,
like describe it in a way that feels satisfactory.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Right, right, right, So the question is kind of silly
no matter how you ask it. Humans use language to
coordinate and cooperate, and science as an organized way to
use that language while avoiding psychological biases, or at least
removing them as much as possible.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, So essentially the point here being that, like, what's
the point of science? I feel like that's kind of
a silly question. We have tried a lot of ways
to interact with the world and with each other over
the history of mankind. Many of them suck a lot.
War failure, like, that's not a good way to do it.
Superstition failure, that's not a good way to do it.
(09:19):
Religion epic, colossal, massive failure. That's like the worst way
you could possibly do it. The best way we have
ever come up with to interact with the world and
each other is through science. Like, we've done it a
lot of ways. I only listed a few, but the
best way we've done it to science, that's been the
most productive. It's allowed us to avoid the most mistakes.
It doesn't really need to have a point, because it's
(09:41):
not like a doesn't need to be a thing. The
best way that we have found to coordinate and cooperate
with each other while ruling out cognitive psychological biases is
through scientific processes. And I understand, like people are going
to point to all the terrible things that scientists have done,
and that's true. There have been a lot of problems
and the name of science that have happened. But it
(10:03):
is the self correcting machine that like it eventually got
to a better and better place over time, because that's
kind of the nature of the inquiry of science. Like it,
it begets things like ethics, it begets things like morals,
it begets things like progress. That's kind of what it does.
And it has been used to horrible ends and it
will be used to horrible ends again in the future,
but it will get better and improve. The other ways
(10:26):
that we've done this, they only get worse, Like they
pretty much never solve anything, and they create a lot
more problems and they make things worse. Right, So like,
until there's something better than science, that's just the best
wave we've got to like go, you know, like to
do this thing.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
I agree, I agree it's it's more unifying than anything
else that we've done so far exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
So that's that's the point, I guess. If you have to,
if you have to put a label on it, if
you have to put a fine point on the thing,
that's what's going on there. So Yeah, if you'd like
to tell us your thoughts on the point of science
or anything that we said in here, you can email
us directly and we'd love to hear from you. You can
reach us at our email at info atwwdwdpodcast dot com,
and on the social media platforms and we look forward
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(11:06):
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Speaker 2 (11:17):
You can do.
Speaker 1 (11:18):
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(11:39):
it over there. We don't really have time for that.
At the end of a mini, thank you to my
team of people. Thank you for recording with me today, Shane,
thank you for having me, Thank you all for listening.
Is there anything that I forgot you'd like to add
before we wrap up? No, perfect, Go forth and do science.
This is Abraham, This is Shane. Why we do what
we do? Mini is out.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Bye. You've been listening to Why We Do what We Do.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
You can learn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening and
we hope you have an awesome day.