this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
231 points (96.8% liked)
Socialism
6808 readers
278 users here now
Rules TBD.
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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
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.
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.
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.
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.