Philosophy of Science: Popper vs. ????

Author: dcleve

I was having a dispute with @Ted Wrigley on the Religion channel, as to whether Fine Tuning is a question that can be investigated by science. I THINK that Ted was advocating for a "no". Along the way, he rejected the Popperian boundary condition for science, and claimed that Popper was dismissed in philosophy of science today. Most such conversations end up timing out on the 7 day thread limit, and this one did as well.

This, I think, is a question of interest to other participants on this board, so I am bringing it here. :-)

My last several posts were providing examples of empirical tests of spiritual claims. There were four in this post: https://disqus.com/home/channel/religion/discussion/channel-religion/another_bad_objection_to_one_of_the_best_arguments_for_gods_existence/#comment-4271260531

They included that divine authorship should be infallible, divine creation should pass the Problem of Evil test, and special creation should demonstrate both ecosystem and biochemical optimization for each species. I also included the Problem of Numbers for reincarnation, so they weren't all optimization tests. Ted's comments reference some of these points, he zeroed in on the Problem of Numbers.

Here is Ted's final post:

The ability to make a hypothesis is by no means the same as the ability to test it empirically; that's the distinction I'm trying to get across here. It's also the distinction that Popper was trying (and failed) to get at with the notion of 'falsifiability.' As Popper saw it, we can never 'prove' that a theory was 'true' (because there was always the possibility that some test of the theory might fail in the future), so the best we can do is to keep trying to falsify theories. The more we try — and fail — to falsify a theory, the more confident we are that the theory actually works. But Popper recognized that — to use his framework — some theories simply could not be falsified, meaning that there was no way to construct empirical tests that would definitively show them to be false. That became a major focus for Popper and the people who follow him: identifying and rejecting unfalsifiable theories.

Now of course (as I keep saying), Popper's theories failed. They failed on two points:

— Behavioral pragmatics: scientists simply do not work the way Popper says they should. They make theories and try to apply them, but they rarely try to falsify the work of others, and they almost never try to falsify their own work. In fact, scientists rarely throw out any theory if it can be adjusted or amended to work again.

— Theoretical deficiencies: in order to make the concept of falsifiability work, Popperians have to make a priori assertions about which theories are and are not falsifiable. In that sense, Popper's theory itself is unfalsifiable, since it relies (effectively) on a subjective judgment call. Popper himself eventually realized this problem, though he never really found a way to address it within his framework.

But those theoretical problems aside, Popper's insight is correct: certain theoretical propositions simply do not fall within the purview of empirical science. The issue (as I tried to show with the 'problem of numbers' discussion), is that no empirical evidence can be brought to bear, because the question itself cannot be rigorously operationalized. You can certainly whip up some evidence, as you did by pointing to the fact that people put through certain kinds of hypnotic regression claim to experience multiple past lives... But the original theory of reincarnation is so poorly defined (analytically speaking), that I can simply redefine terms over and over to salvage the central principle. Now that's not bad, mind you — done well that is effectively the process of philosophical hermeneutics — but there is no way to get an empirical handle it.

In order to operationalize research, we have to make assumptions, and those must be valid assumptions. That question of validity is usually non-problematic within the material world, because the assumptions themselves can be treated as testable theories in their own right. But even if we take 'past life' regression as a genuine experience, how could we find empirical evidence that would allow us to distinguish between various different interpretations?

I mean, let's say that someone (Person X) does a regression and remembers being a Roman soldier in Britain. Moreover, X remembers that as a Roman soldier, he buried some object under a particular stone bridge; and then when we go to that particular bridge and dig, we find that particular object buried there. That's pretty astounding evidence, granted, but evidence of what exactly? One person says that X was that Roman soldier in a past life; another person says that X travelled back astrally and communed with that soldier in the past; a third person says that X connected with the universal oversoul, which gave him access to the memories of that soldier. What empirical evidence could we possibly find that would help us differentiate between those three theories? I mean, you've been working on the assumption that there must be a one-to-one correspondence (only one soul can inhabit one body at any one time), which sounds reasonable enough, but how would you validate or justify that assumption if someone questioned it?

Testing something empirically doesn't mean merely finding evidence; it means using evidence to differentiate one theory form another. Where we cannot do that, we cannot do empirical science.

B&B orig: 1/12/19

The Corroding Impact of Corruption on Civilization

Former President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico: A kleptocrat? Probably.

The New Your Times reports on an incident of corruption that occurred in Mexico some years ago. The NYT writes:

The allegation landed like a bombshell in the United States: One of the world’s biggest drug kingpins had paid a $100 million bribe to the former president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto.

Yet in Mexico, the claim — made on Tuesday in a Brooklyn courtroom by a former ally of the drug lord, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, known as El Chapo — was met with barely a shrug.

The news did not lead any of Mexico’s major daily newspapers on Wednesday. Nobody raised the issue at the morning news conference of the current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, usually a daily billboard of the nation’s most pressing political issues.

Mexicans were far more concerned with quotidian [mundane] matters, such as whether they would be able to refuel their cars — a gas crisis has crippled supplies around the country — and whether the new government would get the votes it needs to create a new national security apparatus, part of its plan to curb violence.

Ensuring justice is done “is not in our hands,” said Dolores Haro, 59, who was eating lunch at a taco counter in Mexico City on Wednesday. She said most people she knew had more pressing worries, like the gas shortage.

And allegations of corruption — even on such a monumental scale — are not that surprising, added Pedro Rodríguez, 28, a marketing executive eating at the same counter.

“We Mexicans are no longer shocked,” he said. “We know that there won’t be a response.”

If this is evidence that the Mexican people have become accepting of the inevitability of corruption in their country, could that happen in the US? Given the deep corruption of the Trump administration, that possibility looks far less remote than it did just three years ago.

Thieves: In her book, Thieves of State, Sarah Chayes described in ghastly detail the kleptocracy called Afghanistan and how corruption rendered any US efforts at nation, democracy and civil society building as utterly futile right from the get go. My review of <em>Thieves</em> includes this:

It turns out that kleptocrats like Qayum and his kleptocrat brother, president Hamid Karzai and the rest of the entire Afghan government know two things very, very well. First, they present themselves as a safe, rational, sincere refuge in the face of a vicious throat-cutting population. Chayes was terrified for a long time and another Afghani kleptocrat Chayes worked with did that number on her to keep her on a short leash. Kleptocrats need to keep outsiders like Chayes from directly interacting with average Afghanis as much as possible. Outsider and even leaders speaking directly to the people that non-leader kleptocrats have feared for centuries.

Second, all high level kleptocrats learned to speak English. They work hard to learn the jargon and acronyms that Western minds want to hear. On other words, they tell us exactly what we wanted to hear. The poison sounded so true and rational because it sounded so much like us.

It took years before the US even came to understand the deep degree of systemic corruption in Afghanistan and how it neutered all US efforts in that country. To some extent, the US fostered the corruption by directly supporting known kleptocratic oligarchs and politicians, thus earning the US the hate of many average Afghan people. To the extent there are forces in Mexico working against corruption, they are probably fighting a bloody, losing battle. The forces of civilization are betrayed at the very top of the Mexican government.

An existential threat?: Is corruption an existential threat to civil society and maybe even the human species? Corruption arguably is destabilizing because it invariably leads to a very small group of very wealthy people or families with the rest living with low to modest income.

Is global corruption a global problem? Seems so.

The redder, the more corrupt - 2017 data

Is wealth distribution in the US what Americans think it is? No, and it is going in the opposite direction from public desires.

2010 data - the 2017 tax reform bill further redistributed wealth from the bottom to the top

Does that distribution of wealth reflect honest government, corruption or some combination of the two? Opinions will differ.

B&B orig: 1/1719

How Trump's Base Sees His Rhetoric

Puffery: in law, puffery is a promotional statement or claim that expresses subjective rather than objective views, which no "reasonable person" would take literally; the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) defines puffery as a "term frequently used to denote the exaggerations reasonably to be expected of a seller as to the degree of quality of his product, the truth or falsity of which cannot be precisely determined"

Puff piece: an idiom for a journalistic form of puffery: an article or story of exaggerating praise that often ignores, downplays or rejects opposing viewpoints or contrary evidence or logic

Bill Maher aired an interview with Ann Coulter, a well-known Fox News political entertainer. She is a staunch Trump supporter and was given by some or many people almost exclusive credit for flogging President Trump into shutting down the government to force the border wall to be built. In this 7-minute segment, she makes it crystal clear that building a border wall will be highly effective in stopping illegal immigration. She strongly rejects any assertion to the contrary on that point.



However, what she has to say about Trump's rhetoric and the truth is arguably just as or more important.

Context: In the months before and the months after the November 2016 elections, many Trump supporters nearly everywhere, including on this channel, vehemently denied that Trump lied even once during the election and in the months thereafter. No amount of citing contrary objective fact or obvious truth budged Trump's base on this point. Some supporters were more subtle about it and made the incoherent assertion that one needed to take Trump seriously, but not literally.

The complete irrelevance of Trump's lies to his supporters was utterly baffling in view of how plentiful and obvious the lies were and still are. The apparent complete obliviousness of Trump supporters to the torrent of obvious lies to this day remained utterly baffling to this observer. Baffling, until Coulter's explanation to Maher. Now it is understandable, but still incoherent.

In the interview, Coulter claims to speak for Trump's base and is adamant on that point. Given her popularity, one can assume that is mostly true. So, how does Coulter speak by proxy for Trump's base about his endless, obvious lies?

Simple. Coulter just dismisses Trump lies as mere puffery of little or no importance or relevance. The lies are just a rejection of a bipartisan political establishment that has misled and lied about immigration control. She asserts that the only thing that is relevant to the base is that Trump deliver border control, and a wall would be highly effective.

As is the case for journalistic puff pieces (an oxymoron, marketing is what puff pieces are, not journalism), Coulter completely rejects any of the contrary evidence that Maher offered as rebuttal to her assertions. In asserting the puffery defense for Trump's lies, consciously or not, Coulter seems to use a definition of puffery that excludes the possibility that any person who sees lies is not a reasonable person. Given the logical incoherence of Coulter's argument, it is doubtful she ever bothered to look at a definition or think about it.

Incoherence aside, if Coulter really does speak for the Trump base, the base has moved from a position of 'no lies' to 'just puffery and you are unreasonable if you do not see it our way'. This is the defense of the greatest presidential liar in US history.

Is that defense persuasive? Or, is Coulter herself honestly self-deluded, or just a bald faced liar? Or, is she right that Trump is not lying, but simply puffing on us and people are being unreasonable about this?

Coulter's arguments reveal another thing about the Trump base. They want border and immigration control for economic reasons, not social or demographic reasons. That is contrary to research that suggests that perceived threats from globalization and social or demographic change, not economic reasons (job loss), was the most important reason that people voted for Trump.

No doubt, Coulter would reject that data too because it contradicts her story.

B&B orig: 1/26/19

A Defense of Democracy is Beginning in Congress

Hitler, Franco, Stalin

President Trump’s affinity for various authoritarians is well-known. He praises them for their dictatorial savagery and pines for their unfettered kleptocratic way of life. Along the way, as we all know, congressional republicans have been actively (or by their silence) aiding and abetting Trump’s moves toward some form of an anti-democratic, white Christian authoritarian, kleptocratic government. He holds truth in utter contempt, and constantly attacks and undermines anti-authoritarian democratic institutions including the professional press and news outlets, the rule of law, independent courts and independent law enforcement.

By now, none of this is new to anyone. And as we all know, Trump and his supporters completely reject all of it as a pack of lies by a vast deep state conspiracy running false flag operations to try to accomplish what it is that Trump is actually trying to do himself. The gulf in perceptions of reality between the two sides is vast and now hardened to a point such that bridging it is impossible. There is no basis for a meeting of the minds or compromise.

Americans may be unhappy about the situation, but is it certain that America’s enemies, especially Russia and China, are loving this all-American hate-fest. Especially the fact that America is under attack from within. For the last two years, neither congressional republicans nor Trump have been standing in defense of America, but instead are attacking it, either directly or by silent complicity. At present, America's enemies are winning and America is losing.

A nascent defense begins to take shape: House democrats are beginning to mount a defense. H.R. 1, the first major piece of legislation is designed to shore up democratic defenses by elevating what had been norms before Trump to the level of the rule of law. Advice from ethics officers in government were a joke and of almost no influence. Trump easily destroyed toothless norms and ethics concerns by simply ignoring them, showing just how weak and fragile our defenses of democracy really are. That failure has been massive and bipartisan, but that is a different topic.

H.R. 1 contains really interesting provisions. Vox reports:

House Democrats will unveil full details of their first bill in the new Congress on Friday — sweeping anti-corruption measures aimed at stamping out the influence of money in politics and expanding voting rights.

This is HR 1, the first thing House Democrats will tackle now that a new Congress has been sworn in. To be clear, this legislation has little to no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Senate or being signed by President Donald Trump. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already bluntly stated, “That’s not going to go anywhere.”

But by making anti-corruption their No. 1 priority, House Democrats are throwing down the gauntlet for Republicans. A vast majority of Americans want to get the influence of money out of politics, and want Congress to pass laws to do so. New polling from the PAC End Citizens United found 82 percent of all voters and 84 percent of independents said they support a bill of reforms to tackle corruption.

Given how popular the issue is, and Trump’s multitude of scandals, it looks bad for Republicans to be the party opposing campaign finance reform — especially going into 2020.

In the area of campaign finance alone, these logical measures are included:

Public financing of campaigns, powered by small donations. Under Sarbanes’s vision, the federal government would provide a voluntary 6-1 match for candidates for president and Congress, which means for every dollar a candidate raises from small donations, the federal government would match it six times over. The maximum small donation that could be matched would be capped at $200. “If you give $100 to a candidate that’s meeting those requirements, then that candidate would get another $600 coming in behind them,” Sarbanes told Vox this summer. “The evidence and the modeling is that most candidates can do as well or better in terms of the dollars they raise if they step into this new system.”

Support for a constitutional amendment to end Citizens United.

Passing the DISCLOSE Act, pushed by Rep. David Cicilline and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, both Democrats from Rhode Island. This would require Super PACs and “dark money” political organizations to make their donors public.

Passing the Honest Ads Act, championed by Sens. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and Mark Warner (VA) and introduced by Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) in the House, which would require Facebook and Twitter to disclose the source of money for political ads on their platforms and share how much money was spent.

Changes to ethics rules are part of H.R. 1, including (1) requiring disclosure of 10 years of tax returns for president, vice president and candidates for president and vice president, and (2) creating a new ethical code for the US Supreme Court, ensuring all branches of government are impacted by the new law.

Changes to voting rights laws are also included, such as (1) creating a national automatic voter registration that asks voters to opt out, rather than opt in, and (2) ending partisan gerrymandering for federal elections and prohibiting voter roll purging, e.g., by ending use of non-forwardable mail to remove people from voter rolls.

For Trump and congressional republicans, this kind of legislation is dead on arrival. Senate majority leader McConnell calls it a power grab, which it is. It is just a power grab for voters, not his corrupt party and its corrupt, failed ideology. H.R. 1 will never pass the Senate, and probably never even be brought to the floor for a vote. And, if he had the chance, Trump would veto it without second thought. There is no way that Trump would ever willingly let his tax returns be seen.

Despite its zero chance of passage into law, H.R. 1 sets up the fight for the 2020 elections. It will be clear to everyone, and deniable by no one, where people stand in defense of America. Passage of the bill forces the republicans to let it die as quietly and opaquely as they can. For that reason, the House could pass it periodically to keep attention on the issues it addresses. That would be the same tactic the House used by passing bills to repeal Obamacare 60 or 70 times with no chance of becoming law. They made their point repeatedly. Now, it is time for democrats to make their points repeatedly.

Vox writes:

Democrats know they don’t actually have a shot of passing HR 1 through the Senate, or getting it past the president’s desk. But they recognize they need to get serious about the issue, even if Republicans won’t.

“To say to the public, from this point forward, if you give the gavel to lawmakers who are interested in being accountable to you, this is the kind of change you can expect to see,” Sarbanes said. “If you like this, give us a gavel in the Senate and give us a pen in the White House.”

The battle lines could not be clearer and the stakes probably cannot be much higher.

Mussolini

B&B orig: 2/4/19

Are the Two Parties Equally Responsible for America’s Sad State of Politics?

This is a 6-minute segment where Bill Maher pushes back on the idea that the two parties and their ideologies are basically equivalent, morally or otherwise. Is it persuasive?



B&B orig: 2/9/19

The Origins of Rising American Kleptocracy: Russian Kleptocracy

Plutocracy: government by the wealthy; an elite or ruling class of people whose power derives from their wealth

A disturbing article in The Atlantic magazine, Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America, focuses on current American politics and the false image that America had about Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed in December of 1991. Washington falsely believed that Russian leaders had committed to democratic capitalism, but in fact they were dedicated authoritarian kleptocrats.

The Founding Fathers' worry: The author, Franklin Foer, points out that the Founding Fathers were very concerned with the possibility that bribery and the corruption it buys would become the norm. He is blunt on this point: “The Founders were concerned that venality would become standard procedure, and it has.” He argues that even before Trump rose to power state politicians and American elites had proved themselves to be “reliable servants of a rapacious global plutocracy.” The elites that Foer points his finger at include lawyers, lobbyists, real-estate brokers, and politicians in state capitals, all of whom enabled creation and hiding of shell companies. The financial opacity that created led to laundering of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that kleptocrats accumulate each year.

The article concludes with this: “American collusion with kleptocracy comes at a terrible cost for the rest of the world. All of the stolen money, all of those evaded tax dollars sunk into Central Park penthouses and Nevada shell companies, might otherwise fund health care and infrastructure. . . . . One bitter truth about the Russia scandal is that by the time Vladimir Putin attempted to influence the shape of our country, it was already bending in the direction of his.”

How did American get Russia so wrong?: Foer argues: “Washington had placed its faith in the new regime’s elites; it took them at their word when they professed their commitment to democratic capitalism. But Palmer [CIA station chief in the US Moscow embassy] had seen up close how the world’s growing interconnectedness—and global finance in particular—could be deployed for ill.”

That sounds much like how the US was completely deceived for years by the kleptocrats who ran and still run the government in Afghanistan. In her book, Thieves of State, Sarah Chayes describes the simple but effective technique that kleptocrats employ to facilitate systemic, massive looting of an entire nation. In essence, kleptocrats speak English and they work hard to learn the jargon and acronyms that Western minds want to hear. The poisonous lies sound true and rational because it sounds so much like us.

Although Statin Chief Palmer tried to warn congress of what was happening, congress simply could not or would not see the ugly reality he laid out for them. Maybe they were already under the spell of corruption. Foer writes: “The United States, Palmer made clear, had allowed itself to become an accomplice in this plunder. His assessment was unsparing. The West could have turned away this stolen cash; it could have stanched the outflow to shell companies and tax havens. Instead, Western banks waved Russian loot into their vaults. Palmer’s anger was intended to provoke a bout of introspection—and to fuel anxiety about the risk that rising kleptocracy posed to the West itself. . . . . This unillusioned spook was a prophet, and he spoke out at a hinge moment in the history of global corruption. America could not afford to delude itself into assuming that it would serve as the virtuous model, much less emerge as an untainted bystander.”

Morals . . . . what morals?: That speaks volumes about the utter immorality of international finance, and complicit elites and politicians who know full well exactly what they are doing. It was all about the money, nothing else. Claims of selfless patriotism or high ethical standards ring hollow. The opacity of the system they set up was intentional and necessary, not an accident or mere coincidence. There is nothing moral about this. It is all about theft and nothing more.

Claims that capitalism and business are just amoral and morality is irrelevant are completely false. There is no defense for that argument in view of the facts and the logical conclusions they lead to.

The amounts of money involved are both staggering and destabilizing. What should go into public interest spending and civilization-building go instead into bank accounts of kleptocrats and their enablers, including state governments, lawyers and the real estate industry. All kleptocrats and their enablers work very hard to hide as much of their immoral sleaze as possible, preferably all of it. If they had their way, kleptocracy would be fully legal.

The amounts of money are so great that for the enablers, they believe their own BS about their high morals.

One of history’s greatest heists is still ongoing: The scope of the theft was staggering: “In the dying days of the U.S.S.R., Palmer had watched as his old adversaries in Soviet intelligence shoveled billions from the state treasury into private accounts across Europe and the U.S. It was one of history’s greatest heists. . . . . By one estimate, more than $1 trillion now exits the world’s developing countries each year in the forms of laundered money and evaded taxes.”

An existential threat?: From time to time, B&B raises the idea that international corruption could constitute an existential threat to civilization, and maybe even the human species. Occasional articles like this reinforce that possibility. Denials by kleptocrats, including President Trump, are neither plausible nor persuasive.

The question is this: Is there still enough political honesty, will and power to turn the tide of corruption back, or is it too late, especially in view of the pro-kleptocrat, anti-rule of law Trump backed by congressional republicans?

BB orig: 2/10/19