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Episode 116: The Knowledge Machine

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Manage episode 506677637 series 2853322
Content provided by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

This week Bruce take a deep critical rationalist dive into Michael Strevens’s book, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, which is an attempt to describe how science is a self-correcting system designed to create knowledge based on explanation.

The book is somewhat critical of Popperian falsification, though the reading of Popper presented may be a superficial reading.

Bruce describes how Strevens’s “iron rule of science” or the idea that we should settle science based on empirical tests overlaps with what Bruce calls “Popper’s ratchet,” or the idea that we should strive to move our theories to be more testable and avoid ad hoc saves designed to make our theories less testable.

Is there anything we can learn from a (semi) Bayesian / Inductivist like Strevens that we Popperians don't already know?

Perhaps more interestingly, Strevens' theory is meant to explain why we got stuck in static societies for so long. How does his theory compared to Deutsch's?

  continue reading

120 episodes

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iconShare
 
Manage episode 506677637 series 2853322
Content provided by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Bruce Nielson and Peter Johansen, Bruce Nielson, and Peter Johansen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

This week Bruce take a deep critical rationalist dive into Michael Strevens’s book, The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science, which is an attempt to describe how science is a self-correcting system designed to create knowledge based on explanation.

The book is somewhat critical of Popperian falsification, though the reading of Popper presented may be a superficial reading.

Bruce describes how Strevens’s “iron rule of science” or the idea that we should settle science based on empirical tests overlaps with what Bruce calls “Popper’s ratchet,” or the idea that we should strive to move our theories to be more testable and avoid ad hoc saves designed to make our theories less testable.

Is there anything we can learn from a (semi) Bayesian / Inductivist like Strevens that we Popperians don't already know?

Perhaps more interestingly, Strevens' theory is meant to explain why we got stuck in static societies for so long. How does his theory compared to Deutsch's?

  continue reading

120 episodes

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