Growing pains for Wikipedia

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bad example

"Observation and experience do seem to work fairly well in approximating reality "

The subject of computers is one that is defined, bottom up by people. When it comes to Wikipedia, there is no question about how a computer works and what each component part of a computer is. Computers are really an abstraction. That is not to say that they don't exist, but that they are designed based on experiences and human interpretation of those experiences, which make them a physical abstraction that is assumed to work under certain conditions in which the experiences were taken from. If you were to try to understand the underlying reality from which they are abstracted from, then you would again be talking about true reality, which like I have stated, is really unknown, and always will be.

Experiences only help people to build abstractions on top of reality. They do not help people to understand it.

Theories, try to account for all observations and experience and can be useful in predicting reality, but again, don't allow you to understand its workings. I find a lot of scientists are confused by this, which cause them to attach faith to theories. This is a road block in science.

As of current, human theories guide us to discovering more experiences, which allow us to revise our theories (sometimes drastically) to account for these new experiences. There may be a time when our theories no longer guide us to any further experiences and all our experiences are accounted for by our theories. All we could deduce from such a situation is that we have reached our limit of experience. This by no means is a way of finding the limits of reality which may reside far beyond our limits of experience. But of course these limits aren't important to use, because they don't affect us.

Reality is impossible to understand because the only starting point we have is our experiences through our senses. We can surely invent theories which cover a broader and broader range of experiences, and probably one could invent many very different theories to explain the same phenomenon. But these theories are only ever theories, which indeed are very useful for abstraction. Do you see our limitations? We are stuck in an abstract world. All we can do is make the best of it.

When it comes to posting theories on Wikipedia, some theories may explain only a small subset of experiences, while others will encompass much more of the observed world, but none will cover them all. So, for this reason, taking them all into mind is usefull for anyone who is trying to develop a theory for their own use.

What makes a theory that covers a large subset of experiences closer to reality than a theory that covers a smaller subset of experiences? Neither is reality, and they are both usefull for any abstractions that require their subset of observations. The fact is, it is possible to create a theory that encompasses the largest subset of observations by slightly altering a theory that covers the smallest subset of observations. By the same light, the leading theory, may be a dead end and may bring you no further in deveoping a complete theory than complete nonsense.

This is why I say that all theories have equal value. It doesn't matter how many observations a theory accounts for, the extent of its undiscovered uses can't be measured. I'm sure humanity will have many branches of science that will come to a dead end. People will have to step back and start from another older theory. That's just the nature of reality.

Posted by: timeofmind   Posted on: 12/06/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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