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Comment by sophacles | Hacker News Reader

The articles of faith can be looked at as axioms of the worldview. For instance "bible = word of god/statement of truth" is a basic axiom.

Similarly in science you do get certain axioms:

* occam's razor * reductionist analysis is the best path to truth * this new theory is more elegant even though it currently unanswers certain questions.

They are axioms without empirical proof, that are argued fairly strongly fairly regularly.

NOTE: I don't disagree with them, just pointing out that there are non-empirical axioms that are fairly dogmatically taught and followed. One frequently under fire is reductionism, particularly in medicine and other biological areas.

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The difference is that science doesn't tell you to dogmatically follow axioms per se. For example, the constancy of the speed of light is an axiom of Einstein's theory of relativity. Evidence that disproves said constancy would eventually lead to revising the theory, just as Newton's axioms were eventually replaced by Einstein's relativity. That's not dogmatic following.

On the other hand, the virgin birth of Jesus (for example) is a dogma of Christianity. From what we know about our world, a virgin birth is not possible, not with the technology that was available at the time the Bible was written. Christians still accept this tenet of Christianity at face value, despite the ample evidence against it (evidence they would never ignore in other aspects of their lives). That's dogmatic following.

It seems like you are engaging in goalpost moving and/or strawmanning here. I explicitly listed non-empirical axioms about the method, and discussed some examples. You are replying with an example of empirical axiom as if it is the same thing.

I never denied nor tried to refute that there are many empirical axioms associated with science. I only stated that there are also a priori axioms which are structurally dogma.

Please stop changing the subject.

I misrepresented your argument, and I apologize for it.

Occam's razor it's simply a way to compare two theory's with IDENTICAL results. AKA for all test data A and B produce the same results however A takes 10 days on a supercomputer to compute and B can be done by hand, I will go with B.

It also has a strong theoretical basis. Add enough epicycles and you can smooth out any irregularity's. But, over fit your data and you lose predictive capability.

PS: Preferring the more complex theory is unworkable, because E=mc^2+(10^(-900))m is going to give the same results for any test you could actually carry out. Having no preference has the same basic limitation.

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