Re:Has a remote Amazonian tribe upended our understanding of...
by bawolff on Wednesday April 21, 2021 @04:55AM
(#26886979)
> Intuitively, at least to me, human languages and cultures don't lend themselves to universal laws.
I wouldn't think so either. That's what makes the claim, whether its right or wrong, interesting.
> And I guess I just don't see the point making any claims of universal laws.
Well it sets a goal post and leads to further questions. Are there exceptions? Why are these features universal and not others? Why is any feature universal? If there are exceptions and they're rare what makes them different from the other cases? Etc.
> "these are incredibly ubiquitous features and here's some useful abstractions and models"
If your model/abstraction doesn't differ from the ground truth as far as we know (or the proposer doesn't believe it does), what's the difference between that at claiming universality.
I'd claim that reality is just a model we don't yet know is wrong. For a long time we would say newtonian mechanics was universal. Now we say its a model that works at low velocity (relative to c). Was it wrong to claim universality back when we weren't aware of any counter examples?
I wouldn't think so either. That's what makes the claim, whether its right or wrong, interesting.
> And I guess I just don't see the point making any claims of universal laws.
Well it sets a goal post and leads to further questions. Are there exceptions? Why are these features universal and not others? Why is any feature universal? If there are exceptions and they're rare what makes them different from the other cases? Etc.
> "these are incredibly ubiquitous features and here's some useful abstractions and models"
If your model/abstraction doesn't differ from the ground truth as far as we know (or the proposer doesn't believe it does), what's the difference between that at claiming universality.
I'd claim that reality is just a model we don't yet know is wrong. For a long time we would say newtonian mechanics was universal. Now we say its a model that works at low velocity (relative to c). Was it wrong to claim universality back when we weren't aware of any counter examples?