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Comment by Tainnor | Hacker News Reader

> I think the easy way to look at this is that a certain segment of society will always want to believe in something beyond the observable world

Even if you believe that, this can also in principle be studied at least somewhat more rigorously by considering philosophy.

There's no "right" or "wrong" answer to "is there anything beyond the observable world?", but there's arguments that are principled and reasoned and others that aren't even internally consistent.

I'll agree though that majoring in metaphysics is unlikely to be something many people will be able to (or willing to) achieve.

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I don't even think it's just metaphysics. People in general like to find patterns in the world even where none exist. The LessWrong community is somewhat infamous for abusing statistics. Political predictions sites like 538 have put out stuff that's not much better than astrology (specifically the granular primary predictions they did), but they make a lot of money feeding people who don't know better. A sense of order is comforting, even when it's nonsense.

Yea the 538 stuff (at least that audience) is a prime example of the McNamara fallacy[0]. It’s easy for people to find comfort in what can/is being measured and appoint it as objective truth, and consequently disregard anything that can’t be easily quantified.

Like u alluded to, people like to at least feel in control. And in the case of astrology it manifests in being able to have a simple explanation for things.

And now that I think about it, I’m sort of puzzled y more things don’t seem to get chalked up to random chance. It’s a simple enough explanation and seems ripe for abuse but strangely doesn’t seem to be. Maybe cuz by definition, its randomness isn’t that satisfying of a conclusion for people to draw

[0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy

Because nothing really ever happens because of random chance. Everything has a reason, and to pretend it happened because of random chance is to say you don't care enough what the reason was to try to figure it out.

Quantum mechanics, at least, seems to indicate that certain things happen if not for "no reason" then at least not for any reason that we can discern in any sort of way.

But beyond that I think your comment misses the larger point: it's exceedingly rare for something to happen for "a reason", most things, even in a deterministic universe, happen due to the combination of multiple factors. Sometimes we can model the cause and effect in simple terms with some success, but in other situations (e.g. wheather forecasts) we deal with nonlinear and chaotic systems that we can't really predict very well.

Yes obviously everything happens for a “reason.” However I’m talking about the majority that internalizes that phrase as indicating there’s some predetermined sequence of events and stars aligning whatever.

Not the “since everything happens for a reason, let me inquire and dig deeper to figure out what was the cause” person. And my point was I’m surprised more people don’t attribute things to random chance cuz it’s an easy out. Again, not the people that actually care about finding things out, Im talking about the astrology type

Sure, cause and effect rules everything, but I suspect that most large systems are chaotic enough that any description we lay on them is just telling stories.

That's a shame, because basic Aristotelian philosophy used to be schoolboy stuff.

Interestingly, the only things we can actually know with certainty are purely abstract, like a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Is that within "the observable world?" Meanwhile it's entirely basic that our senses cannot be trusted. There's a fairly compelling argument to be made that sensory observation isn't a particularly good means of gaining knowledge. My own philosophical inclinations are pragmaticist though, so I believe abductive reasoning can, practically speaking, suffice for a useful if not entirely correct understanding of many phenomena.

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