Ask HN: How to tell what's true from false or right or wrong?

Many people here are writing about various techniques&#x2F;books that talk about science, i.e., for distinguishing scientific truths from non-scientific falsehoods, but as a scientist myself (well ok, computer &quot;scientist&quot;), I think in some sense we give &quot;science&quot; too much credit. There are things we consider &quot;truths&quot; in science which are actually only a veneer on &quot;beliefs as of today&quot; -- i.e., not that far removed from even such non-scientific things as e.g. &quot;religion&quot;.<p>This is very abstract, but more concretely, what I mean is that it helps to read about the philosophy&#x2F;history of science. The canonical recommendation here is Thomas Kuhn&#x27;s <i>The Structure of Scientific Revolutions</i> [1], but I also strongly recommend watching James Burke&#x27;s <i>Connections</i> tv series [2] and then watching or reading his <i>The Day the Universe Changed</i> [3] to understand how our entire conception of &quot;reality&quot; or &quot;truth&quot; is so strongly determined by the technology of the time.<p>Finally, there are lots of &quot;truths&quot; in fields where this is no scientific basis to fall-back on -- politics, art, etc. For these, you have to seek out and find the best elucidators of each field (usually, but not always, books).<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Structure_of_Scientific_Rev...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Connections_%28TV_series%29</a><p>[3]

I can strongly recommend Carl Sagan&#x27;s &quot;Baloney Detection Kit&quot; from <i>The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark</i>:<p><a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-kit-carl-sagan/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brainpickings.org&#x2F;index.php&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;03&#x2F;baloney-de...</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Demon-Haunted_World</a>

&gt; My point is are we suppose to just believe what we are told?<p>Not if you&#x27;re science-literate. Remember that a scientist assumes an idea unaccompanied by evidence is most likely false, while a nonscientist assumes the opposite.<p>Let&#x27;s say someone hears a claim about Bigfoot. If he&#x27;s a scientist, he will assume Bigfoot is a myth until hard evidence appears. But a nonscientist (a person technically known as an <i>airhead</i>) believes that Bigfoot is real until he is proven not to exist. But consider the burden of evidence -- for the airhead to be dissuaded from belief in Bigfoot, something called <i>proof of a negative</i> would be required, which is an impossible evidentiary burden. After all, Bigfoot could be hiding under some rock on a faraway planet, which means he can&#x27;t ever be conclusively disproven.<p>Science is an extremely productive outlook, and the modern world is largely defined by science and the scientific outlook. One of the reasons is that scientists don&#x27;t waste time carrying other people&#x27;s burdens of evidence, like a belief in Bigfoot.<p>&gt; How do you regard something as creditable?<p>Solid, repeated, empirical evidence, created by multiple disinterested observers. Everything else is unsubstantiated rumor.<p>&gt; How do you figure out the truth from false knowledge?<p>A skeptical outlook and an understanding of how science works.<p><a href="http://arachnoid.com/building_science" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;arachnoid.com&#x2F;building_science</a>

In science, it&#x27;s very simple (though not necessarily easy), a theory needs to have predictive power. Important caveat: predictive power about the future.<p>This way you can even test a hypothesis you don&#x27;t even understand. Just get a prediction out of someone who does and see if it checks out without being otherwise obvious. Again, obvious beforehand, not afterwards. There are a couple of heavy tomes you can read about it, a couple of common tricks to side step the test (ad hoc hypotheses) but in principle that&#x27;s it.<p>For example, you test the theory or relativity every time you use GPS. It usually works.<p>Everything else is a matter of taste. Do you like consistency? Logical structure? Elegance? Authority? Peer review? You can make up whatever test you like. There&#x27;s bayesian approach, you can try to consciously correct for your biases... but it&#x27;s hard to beat the scientific method.

Scientific Method, Socratic Discourses. Debate everything until you&#x27;re blue in the face, examine every precept or &quot;given truth&quot;, question every fundament.<p>True from false you can divine with the above, but only within the constraints of what we know and can know - this is the epistemological route.<p>Right from wrong is an entirely different topic, and is an ethical and moral question. A good starting point for considering the very definition of &quot;right&quot; and &quot;wrong&quot; might be to read or read about Kant, Plato, and Aristotle - but ultimately what&#x27;s &quot;right&quot; or &quot;wrong&quot; derives from the very subjective societal norms of whatever cultural context you find yourself within.<p>There&#x27;s essentially nothing which is considered universally right, or universally wrong - you get to figure this one out for yourself.

Figuring out the truths from falsehoods is an art. Sorry, but there you have it. The so-called &quot;Scientific Method&quot; is just mechanics and formalities of what generally convinces people about certain claims.<p>apu&#x27;s recommended reading and viewings (Kuhn&#x27;s &quot;The Structure of Scientific Revolutions&quot;, and Burke&#x27;s &quot;The Day the Universe Changed&quot;) are excellent starting points in your personal explorations into this.<p>Another worthwhile reading comes from Issac Asimov, &quot;The Relativity of Wrong&quot; (<a href="http://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hermiene.net&#x2F;essays-trans&#x2F;relativity_of_wrong.html</a> ). I think he may have been an inspiration to the notion of science as an enterprise at being &quot;less wrong&quot;, per this redacted snippet: John Campbell [Asimov&#x27;s editor], who specialized in irritating me [...] told me that all theories are proven wrong in time. My answer to him was, &quot;John, when people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.&quot; The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that &quot;right&quot; and &quot;wrong&quot; are absolute; that everything that isn&#x27;t perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong. However, I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s so. It seems to me that right and wrong are fuzzy concepts...

Your curiosity is admirable. Please keep it. I wish more people would openly question things in this manner.<p>To answer your questions: No, you should not believe everything you are told. You should look at how credible sources are. I err with science, and for me, religion that discredits science doesn&#x27;t work. I do watch a lot of conspiracy theory things... so many sources are full of absolute crap, but it is fun and I find strings or theories, but little proof or truth. I&#x27;m afraid that if I didn&#x27;t use my brain, I&#x27;d wind up believing all sorts of things. Things I know are untrue. Keep your eyes open, keep the healthy questioning and skeptisicm.<p>My other advice is to remember that the truth can change. Science disproves itself as we discover new things. And this is fine and expected - as long as your views change with new facts, you&#x27;ll be fine. My big example is always religion - If any god or gods give me unrefutable truth that they exist, I&#x27;ll believe in whichever god or gods gave me proof. Otherwise, I&#x27;ll trust in science, keep some distrust for the sensational small-study &#x27;breakthroughs&#x27; and keep on my own path.

I suggest holding two realities in your mind: that it is both true and false. Try to see if the muslim fellow can also hold two possibilities. Also worth having a 4*4 matrix: true&#x2F;false for me&#x2F;him in any one moment. But the true&#x2F;false can also be flawed: absolute truth is considered a spiritual experience.<p>Judaism also has a cosmology. What is truer: Islam or Judaism.. or something else... like the experience itself that it describes?<p>Ironically, maybe being able to hold these possibilities of truth actually takes you to that experience of absolute truth.. where complete opposites can be both completely true and completely false.

2 kinds of knowledge:<p>1. The kind that you can use to make testable predictions.<p>2. The kind that you can&#x27;t use to make testable predictions.<p>Kind 1 is easy to verify. Just test the testable prediction. Done. That&#x27;s really all science is.<p>Kind 2... people have different opinions on. Some people say that Kind 2 is useless and one should reject all of it. Some other people hold Kind 2 close to their heart and find rich meaning in it. With Kind 2, though, there&#x27;s no good way to tell what&#x27;s right.

The study of this is called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Epistemology</a>

Read Julian Baginni <i>The Ego Trick</i>. He examines the notion that our sense of self is false. The feeling that &#x27;I&#x27; exist is wrong. Throughout life we are constantly re-adjusting ourselves. Our worldview changes. What is right or wrong changes depending on where we are standing, and when we are standing there.

What you need to do is to read the Less Wrong sequences. (<a href="http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;wiki.lesswrong.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Sequences</a>)<p>That will help with clearing some things up.

Bertrand Russell goes into this question in some depth. <a href="http://www.ditext.com/russell/russell.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ditext.com&#x2F;russell&#x2F;russell.html</a>

1. There are no absolute universal truths.<p>2. There are only at best absolute local truths i.e. truths which are truths only in a limited local subsystem of the entire possible universe. The moment you consider a larger enclosing system of which the local subsystem is only a part then the truth may cease to be.<p>3. One should be comfortable believing that contradicting truths can co-exist. It is the limitation of the human mind to resolve the contradictions.

∞

You got a lot of &quot;scientific&quot; answers.<p>I want to give you different answer, which almost everyone will disagree with.<p>My answer is this - you ALWAYS know what is right or wrong, true or false. You don&#x27;t need anyone to tell you this. And you certainly don&#x27;t need &quot;evidence&quot;. Evidence is for people who lack imagination. Leaders create their own evidence.