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Post by gabriael on Jul 2, 2015 21:17:45 GMT
Gabriael, I feel that you come to whatever conclusion is most convenient for you at the time. You make hypotheses, you admit, but then you fail to test them and then treat them as theories and just parade around considering them fact. You show no initiative in testing them yourself, and yet expect us all to fall in line and listen to you. I try to test hypotheses, but I mostly can't do it because I can't find your universes. I treat them as fact, because they are the best thing I have and treating them as fact is a way to test them. I thing listening to people is important, as in paying attention to what they say, but my time per day is limited, so I apologize for not having listened to you enough. I am disinclined to trust you based on how you treat other people, because of how you consistently brush off anyone that disagrees with you, and don't treat people how they'd like to be treated. In my experience, those who are unwilling to listen to others and then treat them badly are bad. As in, take over the world, torture people for long periods of time for their own benefit, unquestionably stifle every sentient being on the planet. I am not comparing you to them, however. I am presenting evidence towards the idea that I have very good reasons for distrusting people that casually treat others badly, which from my perspective, you have displayed. I am deeply sorry about your planet, that sounds like a job for me. If you can get me access to your universe I will apply as surgical an amount of violence to help as you like me to. I am also willing to loan you a Michaeli if the problem can't be solved with violence and am prepared to grant your whole population asylum in Toppled. Maybe if you describe the nature of the problem to me I can assist in another way. But look at the Rainbow Unicorn Elf! Her government seems nice to their subjects and it's still a hellhole! Honesty is a lot more important than respect. Making baseless statements with a lack of evidence about a subject you have failed to do research on doesn't strike me as helping the multiverse. It strikes me as the opposite. I do not want to go gallivanting across the multiverse blowing bubbles in my underwear because no one has directly proven that such a thing is stupid. I can't help you there. I try to do reasonable amounts of research about what I'm talking about, but it's all research from my universe and thus not always applicable to yours. All my evidence is derived from what people said on this Forum and from how a suspicious number of people have stopped posting on this highly interesting phenomenon.
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Actuality
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World: Eclipse
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Post by Actuality on Jul 2, 2015 21:26:58 GMT
But I did present evidence for my positions. Please indicate where you did this. I have done everything asked of me, so your monster thing is irrelevant. I have taken most things at face value, but trusting someone who modifies minds is kinda a big No-No. That is reasonable, but Esthfora does not seem to do much mental modification even tested over the long term, and appears largely benevolent. She does seem to have blocked genuine memetic hazards, although fully testing that would require placing some local ones on the board, which seems unwise somehow. You may not have a monster beating down your door, but that is a thing that happens, sometimes, thus illustrating the need for brevity. I am also interested in why you say you have been taking things at face value, as you appear to assume most posters are lying or ignorant. Eh, in Toppled science works like that. It's called "stick-your-neck-out-and-make-a-prediction-or-stop-pretending-to-believe-in-your-theory"-Theory. You pretend your theory is true and make predictions from there until the theory is disproven. It's also important to Act as if your theory is true. There's this funny story about an invisible inaudible dragon whose existence is impossible to prove, so you could just as well act as if there wasn't a dragon. Then there's a second story where the existence of the dragon IS proven, but the one who proves it doesn't act as if the new hypotheses is true, so he's eaten by the dragon. For hypotheses to work, you also have to give equal weight to evidence that might disprove your hypothesis, or you are not actually doing science. It is reasonable to pay less attention to that once sufficient evidence has been accumulated to far outweigh anything not gained through new paradigms, but giving full consideration to those is generally wise. It turned out, for example, there are significant issues applying Newtonian physics to the relativistic scale. (I am assuming the forum will translate that adequately). Yeeees. I know not all universes work the same way. But the ones on this Forum still largely consist of planets made of Wave functions corresponding to electrons and protons. Where the fuck have I said something different? And there's another part of what I call science: When you provide me with more evidence I will CHANGE MY HYPOTHESIS which means I will start for different evidence to disprove my new hypotheses, maybe requiring a higher standard. Because a centerpiece of MY science is being wrong and accepting that you can be wrong, something you can't do because of your ridiculous dignity. If using dignity means that I can't discard fallacious hypotheses, I don't understand how you can live that way. But another saying in Toppled is that "Obviously what the other guy does works in some way or he would be dead." Like MagicPhD's world, mine has both matter and antimatter, but the former seems to exist in dramatically larger quantities. And that is before you get into the really strange things, like some of the things the TITANs did. Furthermore, Toppled seems to be able to have civilizations that exist on the subatomic level without problems related to quantum fluctuations, which has been extensively ruled out in Eclipse. Even the TITANs seemed unable to break that barrier. Accepting that you can be wrong is indeed a centerpiece of science. That is how it works at all, which is why I do not think you are in fact using it. I am confident because my premises have been extensively tested, including some multiversal interactions. The party, for example, did not cause permanent death or injury to any guests, although we did go into it prepared for explosions, as per standard protocol. Edit: I should probably have expected other people to get here first given how long it took me to check my references. See again the point I made about brevity earlier, gabriael.
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MagicPhD
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Posts: 95
World: Fractal
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Post by MagicPhD on Jul 2, 2015 21:28:12 GMT
I try to test hypotheses, but I mostly can't do it because I can't find your universes. I treat them as fact, because they are the best thing I have and treating them as fact is a way to test them. That seems an odd way to treat a hypothesis that is not backed by great evidence. When there are multiple competing hypothesis and none has much better evidence, one should not pick one and act as if were true, but rather act as if it is unknown and continue to gather evidence for and against all hypothesis.
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Post by gabriael on Jul 2, 2015 22:03:42 GMT
That seems an odd way to treat a hypothesis that is not backed by great evidence. When there are multiple competing hypothesis and none has much better evidence, one should not pick one and act as if were true, but rather act as if it is unknown and continue to gather evidence for and against all hypothesis. When there are several competing hypotheses and you can't find one that's backed by better evidence we usually take the simplest one as the most probable one and award penalties for complexity. Can you pick a hypothesis? I discarded rather a lot of them today. You may not have a monster beating down your door. I know there's sometimes situations with a need for trust, this Forum is not it. See what happened to QDS! For hypotheses to work, you also have to give equal weight to evidence that might disprove your hypothesis, or you are not actually doing science. It is reasonable to pay less attention to that once sufficient evidence has been accumulated to far outweigh anything not gained through new paradigms, but giving full consideration to those is generally wise. It turned out, for example, there are significant issues applying Newtonian physics to the relativistic scale. (I am assuming the forum will translate that adequately). Accepting that you can be wrong is indeed a centerpiece of science. That is how it works at all, which is why I do not think you are in fact using it. I am confident because my premises have been extensively tested, including some multiversal interactions. The party, for example, did not cause permanent death or injury to any guests, although we did go into it prepared for explosions, as per standard protocol. What evidence are you talking about? All I get is words inexplicably appearing in my computer. I have disproven a lot of my assumptions and hypotheses. I made by taking those words at face value. I have been shown to be wrong many times!
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MagicPhD
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World: Fractal
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Post by MagicPhD on Jul 2, 2015 22:37:02 GMT
Yes, but you don't treat it as true unless it is vastly more probably. To pick arbitrary numbers, given 3 hypotheses of probability 30%, 30%, and 40%, you don't act as if the 40% is true, you act as if you don't know, and continue to refine and test.
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Post by gabriael on Jul 2, 2015 23:25:20 GMT
Yes, but you don't treat it as true unless it is vastly more probably. To pick arbitrary numbers, given 3 hypotheses of probability 30%, 30%, and 40%, you don't act as if the 40% is true, you act as if you don't know, and continue to refine and test. But what if you have to decide something right then? I mean it's not as if I stopped testing and refining at any point, but I am kinda talking with people and they should know I am not a hundred per cent confident in my hypothesis, especially in a whole multiverse. I shouldn't need to disclaim it constantly. It's not like my hypotheses kill people if I get them wrong, they mostly erred on the side of caution. Mh... Iiiiiii have a hypothesis: When YOU guys have a hypothesis you consider "fact" you kind of latch onto it. You pull it under your shield of dignity(again, my arch nemesis!) and it's hard for you to let go of them. Therefore you train yourself to be wary of accepting hypotheses because you are afraid to be embarrassed by being proven wrong! I mean it would explain the wildly different style of science! And since I discard hypotheses with the speed and ease as you discard empty soda bottles you are constantly confused because you expect my opinions and beliefs to be something static. This is of course just a guess, just like almost everything I say. I don't know how to gather evidence for it, but maybe someone would be so kind as to help me?
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Post by Mother Starlight on Jul 2, 2015 23:30:56 GMT
Personally I'd rather ruffle a few feathers than people stopping to post here because they weren't prepared to admit their own flaws and got themselves killed. Can we still continue to squabble here in the Petty Squabbling Thread? Can I invite people into this thread by PM or will that get on their nerves too much? I'm willing to relax the usual standards of politeness somewhat for this thread, since it's clearly labeled and therefore easy to avoid. However, I would suggest that people are more likely to stop talking to you if you ruffle their feathers, so if your goal is to have a productive debate, then a moderate degree of courtesy may serve you well. You don't have to agree with people to be nice to them.
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Post by gabriael on Jul 2, 2015 23:53:38 GMT
It's more like nobody agrees with me about what being nice means. And I felt like they dropped the politeness first.
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Post by Mother Starlight on Jul 3, 2015 0:03:19 GMT
It's true there's been a lot of nastiness going around; hence this thread. Would you rather people be polite to you than not?
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Post by gabriael on Jul 3, 2015 9:41:06 GMT
If by "being polite" you mean "staying on topic", then yes!
I'd like them to come out and tell me what they want me to do instead of trying to get into an advantageous social position by condemning my mental structure. I'd like it if people would stay on topic, like MagicPhD.
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MagicPhD
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Post by MagicPhD on Jul 3, 2015 20:17:44 GMT
But what if you have to decide something right then? I mean it's not as if I stopped testing and refining at any point, but I am kinda talking with people and they should know I am not a hundred per cent confident in my hypothesis, especially in a whole multiverse. I shouldn't need to disclaim it constantly. It's not like my hypotheses kill people if I get them wrong, they mostly erred on the side of caution. There is a difference between statements that you are not sure of because the multiverse is vast and so you are probably wrong in some corner of it, and statements of hypothesis with only weak or circumstantial evidence to support it. It seems to be the opinion of the forum that you do not distinguish between these well. For my species/culture, the first good hypothesis does tend to be 'sticky', and cling on longer than it perhaps should; part of a scientists training is to learn how to deal with this. However, the reason we are hesitant to treat hypothesis as true is not due to embarrassment, it is because being wrong has other negative consequences. Consider the following thought experiment. There are 3 buttons: red, green, and blue. Pushing the 'correct' button will give you 10 OTC, picking the 'wrong' button will make the room explode, and the last does neither. There is o time limit, and you can continue to make tests and observations. If you have circumstantial evidence that supports the red being the correct, and blue being wrong, you can form this hypothesis. You should not believe this hypothesis and push the button, until you have more evidence. Likewise, you should not state this hypothesis as truth.
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Post by gabriael on Jul 4, 2015 21:24:01 GMT
Your hypothesis should have some probability of being wrong, because perfect knowledge is often unattainable. You should weigh the probability times the consequence of being wrong against the estimated benefit. In your example I could take apart the buttons, but assuming you can't do that in your Gedankenexperiment, what sorts of tests and observations can you make?
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