News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Decades-long bet on consciousness ends – it’s philosopher... by kbrkbr on Sunday June 25, 2023 @01:30PM (#36470668)
Thank you for your thoughtful comment.

You have many good points.

Let me just say that Popper has been philosophically criticized to the point that some say it is a dead horse. Why are we still using this mixture of Fisherian and Neymar-Pearson hypothesis testing (that is if we don't use bayesian methods)? Because it practically works well, not because Popper was right or found a deep philosophical truth.

These methods just generate more often than not knowledge, as we can judge from the consequences.

I argue that nobody cares if the assumptions we put into the frameworks are philosophical true - they are possibilities, and we try some out. So far we seem to be doing pretty well, no matter what philosophers say about the truth of these assumptions.

I also think bending philosophy to apply to practical advice like "use the tool that works" will not leave much to the notion of philosophy.

But it's not that I have a fixed metaphysical position here. I really only use the tool that was most promising in the past for the task at hand. Never needed philosophy.

Re:Decades-long bet on consciousness ends – it’s philosopher... by kuhewa on Monday June 26, 2023 @03:23AM (#36476728)
> I also think bending philosophy to apply to practical advice like "use the tool that works" will not leave much to the notion of philosophy.

I reckon maybe there's something to this. One thing that comes to mind though is: Granting the fact the NHST is now broadly used by practitioners without knowledge of its background simply because it works, I am not sure that necessarily indicates the background isn't important, as my ignorance of my monitor's inner workings does not mean that electricity is not important.