this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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Theory must be met with practice, they mutually inform and reinforce each other. The important bit is that we cannot rely on simple empiricism and feel out better or worse policies when the entire system needs to change. This is where theory helps us understand what our systems are naturally leading towards, and what will replace them. The world will not be made better by imperialist countries trying slightly different policies gradually, but instead by the adoption of socialism and the end of imperialism and neocolonialism.
You make a claim, try it and test it. If it does not work then try the next. Science should be the core of political philosophy.
I've been concerned that since the invention of science and it's now centuries of success that science is not the core of a political ideology. At best it's a shit eating sidekick that gets called upon anytime someone needs to bolster their legitimacy. Most political ideology floats around as is without any concern to prove itself measurably.
If one were to control a nation what they control is the potential to run many experiments. Even without intending concepts are being tested. Maybe what your actual concern is some concepts may not operate on the small scale and begin to operate at a higher echelon. Now that makes them particularly difficult to test.
Ultimately what should be done is that humans should come together globally to run experiments to prove to themselves what actually works over a span of a generation or two and then revisit and question on a regular basis. Now that would be enlightened behavior.
Why just make a bet and guess? We can literally experiment and know. Why have "feelings" when we can have knowledge. I promise you reality doesn't care about anyone's feelings but reality does obey facts.
Now if the facts don't align with political philosophy X or Y and you're a huge fan of X or Y then I have unfortunate news for you. Reality doesn't care about your views if they are unaligned with truth.
Socialism itself is scientific, the problem is reliance on vulgar empiricism over using empiricism to supplement dialectical materialism. To use a comparison, engineering begins by understanding the laws of physics, then proceeds to apply these laws and create a prototype, before relying on empiricism to refine and improve. Theory in this instance is the study of the laws of social science, and this is tested and affirmed with practice. Your approach denies the theory and overly relies on iterative micro improvements, which can be disastrous while we already have identified root causes of modern ailments as well as solutions.
This is how socialist countries already knew socialism was the answer before implementing it, which they then work on gradually and iteratively improving once it is established.
The absolute core of any political philosophy should be that it is testable and the goal is measurably increasing human wellbeing. It shouldn't matter from which philosophical house a policy comes from if it works then it works, if it does not then it doesn't. Also how did we identify the root causes of modern ailments? With measurements? You keep running and then legitimizing via the scientific method but ensuring it is an unnamed party in the endeavor.
Socialism has been around arguably for two centuries (in some different named form for much longer) and yet we don't have even a single nation existing in what anyone would consider to be a utopia. I'm not denouncing anything, just arguing there is room for improvement and that it is through experimentation and measurement we can gain that improvement.
The singular most important philosophy and most fruitful by far humanity has yet to create unfortunately is not socialism or any other political ideology or religion or culture but science. Science should be the core of any political ideology full stop.
It is through science that we know. We should know the best structure through which to organize people and commerce, to organize power and production and by best I mean that which produces the most human wellbeing while being reasonably neutral towards nature of which we require for survival.
At the beginning and end of it all Truth is king, we all must obey what is true, and our primary focus as minds should be discovering truth as best we can manage. Testing and measurement is so far the best means we have regardless of the other creative, colorful, and downright beautiful mental constructs human minds create. We must test and measure to know, otherwise it is no different than religion.
The problem here is that, by holding to vulgar empiricism, you are taking an anti-scientific approach while claiming to support science. Again, returning to my example, if I say dropping a ball at sea level into a pit will result in an acceleration towards the Earth at roughly 10 meters per second squared, this is because we have studied gravity. We can test it and verify this, but we already know beforehand how it will end up. In the off chance this fails, we have to obviously reevaluate our understanding of gravity.
When engineers design a new prototype, they do so based on already studied laws of physics that have been tested in real life. They do not begin from scratch, rediscovering the world each time, but instead rely on collective knowledge of how the world works, the laws of physics. Social science is also a science.
Philosophy too is scientific. There is anti-scientific philosophy, such as idealist branches of philosophy like Solipsism, as well as mechanical materialist branches of philosophy like physicalism and vulgar empiricism. These world outlooks do not adequately explain the world and how it functions, even if mechanical materialism is superior to vulgar idealism.
No socialist country has ever claimed to be a utopia. Marx denounced and debunked the mechanical materialist and idealist socialists of the past, and turned socialism scientific by advancing the world outlook of dialectical materialism. The theory of evolution is one such example of a development in science that proves the necessity of dialectical materialism over vulgar mechanical materialism and empiricism. If everyone was a vulgar empiricist, then evolution would be unobservable.
Socialism, once established, already relies on experiment and relying on theory and analysis to plan ahead and deal with problems as they arise. Empiricism is a core part of how this works. The problem is exclusively relying on empiricism, which becomes a rejection of science and knowledge in favor of a vulgar, small worldview.
Why is it vulgar? Also if it's anti-science it's probably bullshit like religion or other such nonsense. Yes if there is new evidence that contradicts what is known then what is known needs to be reevaluated, not held onto like dogma (like anti-scientific views). Where do you think those already known laws of physics engineers use comes from? Testing and experimentation.
We can reasonably define human wellbeing and happiness in a way that is measurable. We can definitely define environmental impact and environmental wellbeing in ways that are measurable. The goal is to maximize the wellbeing of our species and our environment we depend on.
Now if you believe that an anti-scientific method will get you to an optimal state that's fine, you're free to think whatever you want. I simply disagree. At the end of the day every last mind only knows through experimentation and measurement. For instance I can touch my nose through experimentation and measurement when I was an infant. Now if you think you know something through some other means beyond experimentation and measurement it would be intriguing to discover this new mechanism unknown to any human or creature ever in history.
"Vulgar" meaning dogmatic, underdeveloped, and incomplete. I haven't once denied the utility of experimentation and empiricism, just on the reductive use of it. I am aware of the fact that theory comes from experimentation, but it isn't experimentation itself. A dogmatic use of empiricism is saying we cannot know if dropping this specific apple in this specific place will result in the apple falling until we test it, perhaps that's a better explanation of the issue.
Contrary to your assertion, I believe in a more scientific approach than that. We move beyond simple, vulgar, underdeveloped empiricism to dialectical materialism, which itself makes abundant use of empiricism. It is the opposite of anti-scientific, it's the assertion that through practice we form a more and more complete view of the world, and better and better predict what will happen if we do something. Vulgar empiricism removes that predictive element and treats each moment as new and disconnected.
Returning to capitalism and socialism, we can observe definite trends towards centralization and socialization of production, while retaining private distribution. This naturally heightens the gap between the capitalists and workers, despite also killing off competition. The resolution of this is therefore socializing ownership of the means of production, not just the production process itself.
In other words, by analyzing scientific laws through practice, we can better understand how to get what we want without reinventing the wheel every time. Ignoring the laws of science and instead treating everything as disconnected and new, as the vulgar empiricists do, is anti-science.
You can't know, you assume with mathematical confidence developed from experimentation but absolute knowledge aka above typically five sigma cannot be gained without said experiment. To be clear, what is "known" by science is an assumption that has a known error bounds given the information we have currently. There is nothing produced by the scientific method or any other that is absolute beyond a priori knowledge aka that which is self defined or known independent of any measurement or test. Typically a priori knowledge is not terribly useful in reality. It's mostly circular logical, shit that's true by definition like the statement "a bachelor is an unmarried male" or "1 is 1" aka not useful for shit.
You see a lot of appeals to something being true by definition in religion. It's true because God said it and I know God said it because it's in this book and if it's in this book God said it and if God said it it's true, aka circular nonsense. There's no need of such nonsense in political philosophy.
I say perpetually dedicate some percentage of resources to extreme experimentation (moon shots), particularly in the realm of political philosophy. You can never be certain you've fallen into a local minimum and just around the corner is a global minimum you're missing out on. Don't be a dogmatic slave in short. I do want to temper this with reasonable morality as if individuals involved should be knowledgeable and consenting to said experimentation.
Of course they are all assertions that can be disproven, in fact the idea that something can be tested one day and be verified for eternity is also an assumption that vulgar empiricists make that in fact is also anti-science. Change and development happens all the time, and it's possible that something true one day could be false the next, as conditions are always changing. The world is not a clockwork machine.
Surely you can see the advantage of prediction based on past experience even in new conditions, and that the more we do this the better we get at predicting, no? If not, you are taking the anti-scientific stance on the matter, one that traps us and prevents correct action to make the world a better place, always behind what must be done.
Yes and maybe blue is red and up is down and 1=2 and so on. We can dive into all sorts of nonsense that brings us nowhere or we can go along with the means that all minds fundamentally function on and of which has brought us advancement unseen by any creature on this planet or any other we are aware of. For something vulgar it sure is functioning better than literally any other cognitive structure ever created. You're literally responding to me not through the fruit of any political or religious or cultural doctrine but through the vulgar fruits of science.
Increase human wellbeing and decrease humanities impact on the environment. Have an ideas, test it in a way that is measurable. If it does not work to achieve the above goal then don't do it. You're treating political philosophy like religion2.0
I'm not arguing against science or experiment, and if you think that's my take then please reread my comments. I am arguing against the vulgar version of empiricism. Vulgar empiricists rejected evolution, for example, as it is something that occurs over an absurd period of time (from a human perspective) and thus is difficult to test. Same as soil erosion and weathering. Empiricism is a method, and as a method it can be used with correct world outlooks and incorrect world outlooks.
Without a proper world outlook, empiricism is ineffective. For example, early experimentation often relied on gods as an explanation for phenomena. They were still experimental, and still observational, but without a correct world outlook they resulted in incorrect conclusions.
I'm not treating political science as religion, I'm treating it scientifically, with the knowledge that how we view and interpret the world colors how we analyze the world. Incorrect means of analysis means the method is blunted, empiricism without dialectical materialism leads to pitfalls like denying evolution or tectonic shifts. It is also entirely possible to come to correct conclusions without the correct world outlook, but this is often sporadic and accidental.
Where do ideas come from? Are they beamed into our heads, or do they come from how we live and the conditions we exist in? If you believe the former, then you are an empirical idealist, which is incorrect and leads to incorrect lines of analysis. What we know is based on how we practice and experiment, which informs how we can predict similar situations occurring. The more we do this, the better and more complete our knowledge. None of this is nonsense like "0=1," but instead is a definite process of knowledge building.
To re-center, my argument is that we learn more about the world as we interact with it, experiment with it, using empiricism. This leads us to connected conclusions, rather than specific and isolated ones. It's how we know human consumption is contributing to climate change. If we take the narrow and specific, isolated and disconnected view, then experiment is not properly used and leads to improper conclusions. That's why I am saying this vulgar empiricist stance is anti-scientific, and that science has advanced beyond it into better science.
If that's your definition or the location from which you believe I am arguing then I believe we are having two separate discussions a la Voltaire. I am personally fine with theories being well supported by a large body of evidence such as the evolution of man. Now as for evolution as a concept we literally have direct evidence. We can literally watch organisms evolve, typically ones with very short lifespans or else the test will become intractable.
If a concept is not measurable or testable there is no way to determine if it works towards its intended goal or not. The one axiom I've maintained throughout this is the goal is to increase human and environmental wellbeing. We can create measures and test if a concept is bringing us closer to that goal, further away, or has no measurable effect.
It's my belief the core of any political system is to foster wellbeing and that's particularly true for socialism so in that we can test and measure as to ensure concepts are actually creating intended outcomes. If we cannot test or measure then there is no means through which to determine if said policy is fostering wellbeing.
If I present you data that says areas with a lot of storks have higher birthrates, do you think someone should set up an experiment to disprove how storks bring babies?
An actual scientist will be the first to disregard pure empiricism, because otherwise it would literally impossible for science to be done. An empiricist like Hume would be the first to tell you that causality does not exist, we can't guarantee the Sun will come up tomorrow, no matter how much observation or clever theories we have.
I'm aware there is a difference between correlation and causation. I'm not sure that's directly related to what's being discussed. I mean bringing up why five sigma is the measure of scientific knowledge would be more meaningful to this discussion as essentially this has become an epistemological discussion.
The example doesn't only highlight the difference between correlation and causation, it's just one of the ways naive data fetishism is ineffective science. There is no science without experimentation, and there is no experimentation without theoretical frameworks.
Very well said, much more clear than me!
Either we can test and measure or we cannot. If we can't test a concept then there are no means through which to determine it is a beneficial, detrimental, or neutral concept. If the goal is increasing human and environmental wellbeing we can definitely create measures to ensure an idea when employed is getting us closer to said goal, taking us further away, or it has a neutral effect. Once again if there is no means through which to test there is necessarily no way to determine if the concept (hypothesis) is correct or not.
Let's come back to the core of the discussion instead of getting stuck in a what can be other discussions. Minds know things through testing. If reality was inherently inconsistent then there would be nothing to know. So far reality doesn't seem to be inconsistent therefore there is testable knowledge.
If the goal is human wellbeing and the wellbeing of the environment then we can formulate a hypothesis on how to achieve that and methods to quantify and measure human wellbeing and environmental impact. Then we can employ said hypothesis while maintaining a control and measure the outcome to see what effects it had, if the hypothesis is accurate. Without a way to measure there's no way to know if a hypothesis is good or bad or neutral towards the goal. We can test political philosophies, of your argument is that we can not then you're inferring there are no means through which we can determine if it's a good idea or not.