Re:Show HN: I built an active community of trans people online
by wizzwizz4 on Friday January 24, 2025 @06:30PM
(#42817959)
You're not giving that impression, but your criticism was warranted. (I don't understand falsification as well as I thought I did.)
I wouldn't quite say that thought experiments are always deceiving (Albert Einstein found them quite useful, for example), but they are very parodiable. https://existentialcomics.com/comic/183
> "Did he just… not see any of us?" "Rationalists are terrible at seeing stuff. He probably just tried to deduce who was here from reason alone."
Re:Show HN: I built an active community of trans people online
by mmooss on Friday January 24, 2025 @06:40PM
(#42818017)
> criticism
Really, purely curiosity. At first, one thing I was wondering was if some new theory might have caught hold in some corner of academia, for example. Then I wondered if I misunderstood falsification myself.
> Einstein found them quite useful, for example
He is why I made the exception for math. His 'experiment' used math (exclusively?) - and wasn't relied upon until confirmed empirically.
Thought experiments, unless something provable like mathematics, are worse than useless, they are deceiving. There is an evil demon that deceives us, that we cannot overcome.
The only source of knowledge is to go out and ask, 'what do you mean?' Thanks for answering!