Things you can't verify

[Rivendale]

Isn't that just Dan Dennett's version of compatibilism?

(Are the DMT "machine elves" really self-existent entities? I doubt it seriously. But they sure as hell seem like it.) But I'm always open for a good discussion. I think a dose of Psilocybin (magic mushrooms) would convince most people that they as "experiencer" (consciousness) is more fundamental than their "personality" as we normally think of it. (Pardon the clunky prose.) One can achieve the same perception with meditation, albeit with much practice.

DMT is the buzz for the god drug. I have heard that it and other psychedelics produce similar transcendental experiences. A chemical altered brain to discover a new reality is no more than asking what God needs with a starship.

[bill4long]

DMT is the buzz for the god drug. I have heard that it and other psychedelics produce similar transcendental experiences. A chemical altered brain to discover a new reality is no more than asking what God needs with a starship.

I agree. I don't think the "machine elves" have any independent existence outside of brains. Obviously the brain can make it seem that hallucinations have independent existence. It does that when I dream every night. No drugs necessary for that experience. What is interesting about DMT and other drugs is that they can bring about experiences that otherwise normal brains just don't provide to The Experiencer. I think evolutionary psychology is largely border-line pseudo-science, but the purveyors can't really come up with any plausible explanation for this within their own paradigm, in my opinion. The brain is a lot weirder and full of wildly interesting potential than it "should" be. But I admit I'm biased.

[Rivendale]

DMT is the buzz for the god drug. I have heard that it and other psychedelics produce similar transcendental experiences. A chemical altered brain to discover a new reality is no more than asking what God needs with a starship.

I agree. I don't think the "machine elves" have any independent existence outside of brains. Obviously the brain can make it seem that hallucinations have independent existence. It does that when I dream every night. No drugs necessary for that experience. What is interesting about DMT and other drugs is that they can bring about experiences that otherwise normal brains just don't provide to The Experiencer.

I have heard this anecdotal evidence. It seems to pierce some aspect of the ego that is long lasting in people. Unfortunately for this to be of any help we have to fight through that stigma. But that can't be rationalized as being a greater truth. It chemically alters brain patterns that really doesn't help the quest for some other reality.

[bill4long]

I have heard this anecdotal evidence. It seems to pierce some aspect of the ego that is long lasting in people. Unfortunately for this to be of any help we have to fight through that stigma. But that can't be rationalized as being a greater truth. It chemically alters brain patterns that really doesn't help the quest for some other reality.

Yes, I agree. At the end of the day, my hands are full dealing with this reality. Just a squirrel lookin' for a nut. Or maybe a nut looking for a squirrel.

[Rivendale]

I have heard this anecdotal evidence. It seems to pierce some aspect of the ego that is long lasting in people. Unfortunately for this to be of any help we have to fight through that stigma. But that can't be rationalized as being a greater truth. It chemically alters brain patterns that really doesn't help the quest for some other reality.

Yes, I agree. At the end of the day, my hands are full dealing with this reality. Just a squirrel lookin' for a nut. Or maybe a nut looking for a squirrel.

[Physics Guy]

I haven't read the whole transcript of Carroll's remarks; I responded to the quoted excerpts. I rarely read physics presentations aimed at the general public. The world is full of other subjects about which I know little or nothing, so I read about them instead.

I'm sure that few physicists have not heard of Ockham's razor. Most of us are probably also intimately familiar with the practical difference between simple theories and complicated, fussy ones. Lots of things look complicated and fussy when you first begin to understand them, but then seem simple once you understand them clearly. Sometimes, though, the simplicity is an illusion; it's as if you've just built a little lean-to shack out of a couple of boards, except the boards are actually iPads, with a lot of fancy stuff going on inside that you're just not showing.

Some people try to make simple stuff out to be more complicated than it really is, but other people make complicated stuff out to be simpler than it really is. I think that most experienced researchers have looked at the clouds from both sides enough times that they're impatient with complexity but also skeptical of simplicity. The best line is one attributed to Einstein, though it seems to be at best a paraphrase of anything he definitely wrote or said:

Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

The thing about the interpretation of quantum mechanics is that it really does not seem to matter much. You can do all kinds of fancy quantum calculations, and compare them to fancy experiments that could certainly disprove them but usually don't, without ever thinking at all hard about What It All Means. I'm cheerfully agnostic about interpretations. I suspect that quantum mechanics is both fundamentally wrong and yet also inevitably good, within its broad regime of validity, as an approximation to whatever the real theory may be—very much as classical mechanics is within quantum mechanics. Whatever the real theory is, it is probably going to be even stranger and harder for humans to understand than quantum mechanics.

I have no particular pet theory of my own about what the real theory might be. I wish I did have one, but only in a general wish-I-had-a-pony kind of way. I've never felt a pressing need for such a theory right now to help me with anything practical. The interpretation of quantum mechanics is one of those problems that just sits around in everyone's inbox because although it may be important it is not at all urgent.

[Rivendale]

I haven't read the whole transcript of Carroll's remarks

Read the remarks and then continue.

[Chap]

Occam's razor merely claims the explanations with the least amount of conjecture is usually the correct one.

Do you mean "correct", as in the sense of "corresponding to reality"? I'm not sure that people usually use the term "Occam's razor" (in the scientific context) with that notion in mind.

Isn't it more that an explanatory model with a smaller number of hypothetical parameters is methodologically preferable as the basis of a research programme to a more complex model, because it is much easier to attempt to falsify it by experiment?

(I don't claim that my description is bullet-proof in every instance that the term is used, but I think the above explanation will fit most cases.)

Yes JTB. Justified true belief. Or what corresponds to reality via methodological naturalism. It sounds like you are saying that Occam's razor seems to appear correct because it requires less work to negate it.

Excuse me, but it seems to me that either I am failing to understand you, or you don't grasp the point I am making.

Firstly, the issue as I see it is not whether a thing called "Occam's razor" is "correct" or not. To even start to decide that, we would first have to agree exactly what "it" said, which is pretty difficult to do, since the term itself has a long and complex history, even what we might call a pre-history in which ideas later said to embody "it" were used before that name came into use (centuries after the lifetime of William of Occam, c. 1287–1347), and there is no single authoritative version of what "it" says.

As I understand this discussion, it is more about how modern scientific thinkers (more precisely those who concern themselves with how modern science works) describe the processes through which researchers choose which hypotheses it might be worth spending their time and research funds to investigate, or research funding bodies decide which research projects should receive an allocation of funds. And for obvious reasons, one of the major factors they tend to consider (though by no means the only factor) is how difficult it is likely to be to construct and carry out an experimental program to test the hypothesis in question - and the simpler the hypothesis is, the easier it will be to produce publishable and verifiable results - which is what researchers need to do in order to stay in business.

To illustrate my point, it seems a good idea to pay attention to the actual usage of this term by real scientists, such as this recent editorial in a highly reputable peer-reviewed journal:

Bringing out the Occam’s razor in peer-review

Nature Nanotechnology volume 17, page 561 (2022)

We will now explicitly ask reviewers to flag up to us and authors whether a simpler model or theory could explain the experimental data in a given manuscript.

The Occam’s razor is a philosophical tool that advocates the principle of parsimony when deciding which one of two arguments is to be preferred. It was already in use by ancient Greeks, more famously by Aristotle, then adopted in Europe in the late Middle Ages through Arabic scholars and was widely used by the Scholastics. The principle is identified with William of Occam, a theologian who was tasked with looking into the theological implications of a Catholic Church possessing material wealth. (For the record, he concluded that the Church should remain poor following the teaching of Frances of Assisi; the Pope was not impressed and William took refuge under the King of Bavaria.) This principle of parsimony was then taken up by natural philosophers (later, scientists) to help make sense of experimental observations. There are several formulations of the principle of parsimony, but probably the most relevant to science used by William states: no plurality should be assumed unless it can be proven by experience. In other words, there should be a reason (some experimental evidence) to introduce a more complicated theory or model. From Newton through Einstein, many scientists have spoken in favour of applying this philosophical tool in science1.



Despite this, it has been recently eloquently argued that an ‘inverse Occam’s razor’ is taking hold in certain scientific quarters — it’s the idea that by overcomplicating theories and models, aligning them with the catchword du jour, one can come up with something sensational and exotic that is more intellectually attractive and subsequently more likely to secure good grants and be published in high-impact-factor journals2. Unfortunately, this denunciation is not a lone voice. Through our interactions with the academic community, we frequently come across the same concern. This is a serious problem we ought to confront, because it undermines a fundamental tenet of the scientific method. It’s a hindrance to advancing our knowledge of the physical world.

From now on, at Nature Nanotechnology we will include the following piece of instruction to reviewers: In the spirit of the Occam’s razor, do you think the experimental data can be explained using a simpler model or a simpler theory? If so, please provide your rationale and potential control experiments that could disambiguate against alternative explanations.

We do not have the presumption that these few lines will solve the problem — and we are not a police corps either — but we feel the responsibility to contribute to redressing this dubious drift. It’s also a rather straightforward step for us to take, because it is already not unusual that reviewers raise questions over the interpretation of experimental data, proposing an alternative (many times simpler) explanation. When this happens, the burden is on the authors. They should test out the existing model to fit their data and quantify the discrepancy from it. At that point, a suitable adjustment can be offered that is valid under the specific experimental conditions of the paper. If disambiguation between two alternatives is impractical at the time of peer-review, we may force authors to recognize the possibility of a different explanation. The aim is to echo in the final paper the scientific argumentations that have arisen during peer-review. In some cases, we may commission a linked News & Views piece to a reviewer to offer our readers an independent view of the paper as well. However, we are now explicitly asking reviewers to bring out their Occam’s razor.

Importantly, a new model or a new theory must be able not only to fit the data, but also to make predictions that can be experimentally tested. Therefore, authors should be able to propose experiments that would (hopefully) corroborate their theory or model. No predictions, no possibility of corroboration, no theory; it’s as simple as that if you don’t want to call it faith3.

There is no shame presenting a striking experimental observation and having only a tentative idea of what is happening, so long as all relevant hypotheses have been tested out and have succumbed to the experimental evidence. (In a sense, this is what happened to Max Planck when he had to introduce quantization ad hoc in order to explain the black-body radiation; or Richard Smalley when admitting he had little idea how C60 could form.)

A final note of caution: philosophers of science have spoken both in favour and against the principle of parsimony in science4. Sometimes, preserving a plurality of views over an unknown phenomenon keeps the collective intellectual environment ready for a more comprehensive understanding. But we have probably come a bit too far.

[doubtingthomas]

What is interesting about DMT and other drugs is that they can bring about experiences that otherwise normal brains just don't provide to The Experiencer.

According to a researcher, "Why people encounter what appear to be non-human entities while on DMT but not on other drugs is currently unknown." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog ... ity-part-1

Weird if true.

DMT is the buzz for the god drug. I have heard that it and other psychedelics produce similar transcendental experiences. A chemical altered brain to discover a new reality is no more than asking what God needs with a starship.

Or alien drug.