Learning by science

This little blog post seeks to ask two questions: why is science used as the standard device for acquiring knowledge, and on what information do humans actually base their decisions on?

Science has been around for a couple hundred years. It involves the logical process of induction; we acquire massive amounts of data and observations from the world around us, and we try to observe patterns that can arise from this data. As a natural human aftereffect to the knowledge gathering process, we also try to apply causal relationships to observations we make.

This last step is the most dangerous part though: causal relationships that arise as a result of data and pattern research are not logically valid. Trying to develop causal knowledge really falls to the shoulders of abductive logic, which cannot present its conclusion of 100% validity, it can only find multiple solutions, ranked in order of plausibility. Additionally, while this type of logic makes the most meaningful conclusions, there is little formal theory behind constructing an abductive argument. Deduction and Induction have been pared down to the bone starting since Aristotle, on the other hand.

And this is the danger of "science." In order to seek knowledge, one has to have a very firm grasp on exactly what truths one can uncover with the data and observations one can acquire. I honestly think that almost no portion of "science class" is spent critically evaluating why this method is used, and ultimately, how limited it is. The danger of this post, then, is how poorly it is supported with evidence, and how it tries to generate overarching conclusions, from basically the dark.

And how do humans use our grand knowledge acquired through science in order to make decisions? We don't. If we have to replace the transmission in our Honda, we don't buy them because "they have bad transmissions", even though Hondas are shown to be reliable compared to other vehicle brands (there are more '97 Accords on the road still than any other vehicle from that year and class- yes, I completely made this up, but whether or not it's true it can be used to illustrate my point). Our personal experience cannot be taken as a representative experience upon which to make future decisions. For every 100 skilled tasks I perform, I estimate that I make a mistake on 3 of them. However, since I am interacting with other people in each task, there might be 97% of the total population who think I'm excellent, and 3% of the total population who think I'm a putz.

That's what I'm saying, that humans have evolved to be especially discriminatory over our evolutionary timeline. While it's important to make decisions that allow yourself the best chances for success, you've got to be able to understand when quick decisions based on limited experiences cannot make the best decision for you. This is because things don't happen the same way every time. Sometimes, sex makes a boy, other times, it's a girl.