Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per...
by stefantalpalaru on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @07:55PM
(#10748693)
Judging one's work by anything other than the work itself is unscientific.
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Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per...
by Retra on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @08:51PM
(#10748955)
The purpose of science is to generate correct beliefs about the world. If you believe in nonsense, that's very poor scientific work.
Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per...
by isolate on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @08:56PM
(#10748979)
Presumably you can imagine a somewhat stupid robot that does random scientific experiments, generating good beliefs and bad ones. Why would that invalidate the good beliefs?
Belief A has no rational basis. Belief B has a rational basis. If you believe A yet have proven B, that doesn't make B wrong. Even if believe that it was A which led you to the discovery.
Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per...
by Retra on Thursday December 17, 2015 @08:33AM
(#10751333)
It doesn't. But it is a good clue that the robot isn't using a rational process to select beliefs, and is instead doing so randomly. It is far easier to come up with an invalid belief than a valid one, and if you aren't selecting them rationally, you are practically guaranteed to be wrong.
>If you believe A yet have proven B, that doesn't make B wrong.
It makes you wrong. All the time you spend as a proponent for A is wasted.
Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per...
by isolate on Thursday December 17, 2015 @05:48PM
(#10755202)
Brute force approaches can work. For example, evolution produced humans.
I agree that it's better not to waste your time believing A if you can avoid it.
Re:I was denied admission to a PhD program because of my per...
by stefantalpalaru on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @09:01PM
(#10748998)
> If you believe in nonsense, that's very poor scientific work.
Non sequitur. What you believe is separated from your work. Just like when you were a kid and your math homework had nothing to do with the fact that you believed wrestling was real.