On Thursday, November 21, 2019 at 11:42:29 PM UTC-6, Philip Thrift wrote: > > > > On Thursday, November 21, 2019 at 6:22:05 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: >> >> >> >> On 11/21/2019 11:28 AM, Philip Thrift wrote: >> >> >> >> They make predictions of outcomes whether or not those outcomes are ever >> observed. >> >> >> It's tautalogous that predictions are of "outcomes". The point was that >> they can be judged right or wrong* only* if they are predictions of >> *observations.* Otherwise they are like your priest predicting that a >> donation to the church will put you in heaven when you die. >> >> >> Whether predictions are "right" or not is a pragmatic practice that is >> outside the scientific model/formulation/theory itself. >> >> >> A pragmatic practice? So when Eddington measured the deflection of >> starlight by the Sun, he should have then asked himself whether it will be* >> useful *to think that his observation matched Einstein's predict? He >> should have thought about what papers could be written and chairs endowed? >> >> Brent >> > > > Models make predictions of outcomes whether they are observed by humans > (or hypothetical intelligent beings) or not. The models predict outcomes in > galaxies far from ours. In multiverse models, they may make predictions of > outcomes in other universes where we don't even live. > > How human observations relate to models (their predicted outcomes) is a > matter of *pragmatic philosophy*, or so-called agreed-upon scientific > practice. But this is not part of the models. > > @philipthrift >
Also models (like Einstein Field Equations) make predictions of outcomes that are at odds with observations (quantum-scale phenomena, wormholes, etc.), but we still keep them around. Again, that's *pragmatic philosophy*. They are just tools that my be replaced by other tools in the future. @philipthrift -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/0b629c30-0227-4b3b-ad85-f424619e7089%40googlegroups.com.
