On somewhat tagential note: due to massive mis representation of science, people put well founded logical conclusions at same level with entirely unfounded ones, and attribute overly high weight to correlation-based ‘evidence’, seeing the latter as more scientific. That creates a lot of demand for some correlation based ‘evidence’ where one would instead conduct specific experiments instead (e.g. crash-test the cars with dummies and be satisfied; it changes nothing about my personal car choice whenever people who chose some car drive safer, or whenever people on average drive less safely when they are driving a safer car. The dummy may be a poor model of me, but averaged person may be even worse model).
That could have it’s roots in how science is taught at school—formulate hypothesis, test hypothesis with experiment—without the understanding that the reasoning behind hypothesis can very well be considerably stronger as evidence than many of potential ‘experiments’, or can be so weak as to make it worthless to even bother conducting an experiment. (For example, the reasoning (calculations) that the rocket will end up in a particular point in space after executing well controlled burns, is very solid and if the rocket ends up in the other place the chances overwhelmingly are that the experiment, rather than the reasoning, has failed)
The chances overwhelmingly are that there are factors affecting the rocket’s trajectory that the experiment (and by extension, the hypothesis) has failed to take into account.
Unless it’s that you have a very specific definition in mind for “well-controlled burns” (ie. burn engine P for X seconds:milliseconds, then burn Q and R for Y seconds:milliseconds, and your position will be Z) and the mechanism controlling the rockets has failed to time them properly, or if your rocket is shot down by an orbital defence laser (or otherwise sabotaged).
That may have been what you meant anyway? To be fair, I would expect that kind of misdirection in a high school experiment. But it parsed to me as implying “if an experiment doesn’t do what you predicted, reality is wrong”.
Unless it’s that you have a very specific definition in mind for “well-controlled burns” (ie. burn engine P for X seconds:milliseconds, then burn Q and R for Y seconds:milliseconds, and your position will be Z) and the mechanism controlling the rockets has failed to time them properly, or if your rocket is shot down by an orbital defence laser (or otherwise sabotaged).
This is of course what I have in mind.
That may have been what you meant anyway? To be fair, I would expect that kind of misdirection in a high school experiment. But it parsed to me as implying “if an experiment doesn’t do what you predicted, reality is wrong”.
If you take a die that you measure to be perfectly symmetrical and have chance of 1⁄6 to land on each side (after, say, >10 bounces), and you check your reasoning about the die by throwing it, and measuring probability of it landing on each side, you’d need quite a lot of throws until the strength of evidence from deviations can overwhelm the strength of the reasoning. That is to say, your prior for probability being very close to 1⁄6 is high and for any other value, very low. The experiments are not always deterministic; deterministic experiments, if anything, are an exception.
On somewhat tagential note: due to massive mis representation of science, people put well founded logical conclusions at same level with entirely unfounded ones, and attribute overly high weight to correlation-based ‘evidence’, seeing the latter as more scientific. That creates a lot of demand for some correlation based ‘evidence’ where one would instead conduct specific experiments instead (e.g. crash-test the cars with dummies and be satisfied; it changes nothing about my personal car choice whenever people who chose some car drive safer, or whenever people on average drive less safely when they are driving a safer car. The dummy may be a poor model of me, but averaged person may be even worse model).
That could have it’s roots in how science is taught at school—formulate hypothesis, test hypothesis with experiment—without the understanding that the reasoning behind hypothesis can very well be considerably stronger as evidence than many of potential ‘experiments’, or can be so weak as to make it worthless to even bother conducting an experiment. (For example, the reasoning (calculations) that the rocket will end up in a particular point in space after executing well controlled burns, is very solid and if the rocket ends up in the other place the chances overwhelmingly are that the experiment, rather than the reasoning, has failed)
The chances overwhelmingly are that there are factors affecting the rocket’s trajectory that the experiment (and by extension, the hypothesis) has failed to take into account.
Unless it’s that you have a very specific definition in mind for “well-controlled burns” (ie. burn engine P for X seconds:milliseconds, then burn Q and R for Y seconds:milliseconds, and your position will be Z) and the mechanism controlling the rockets has failed to time them properly, or if your rocket is shot down by an orbital defence laser (or otherwise sabotaged).
That may have been what you meant anyway? To be fair, I would expect that kind of misdirection in a high school experiment. But it parsed to me as implying “if an experiment doesn’t do what you predicted, reality is wrong”.
This is of course what I have in mind.
If you take a die that you measure to be perfectly symmetrical and have chance of 1⁄6 to land on each side (after, say, >10 bounces), and you check your reasoning about the die by throwing it, and measuring probability of it landing on each side, you’d need quite a lot of throws until the strength of evidence from deviations can overwhelm the strength of the reasoning. That is to say, your prior for probability being very close to 1⁄6 is high and for any other value, very low. The experiments are not always deterministic; deterministic experiments, if anything, are an exception.