Will spirituality and science unite?

Question: Will spirituality and science unite, and how will that look like?

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They've already been united.

Science is the way to learn about the physical world.

Reason is the way to learn about anything, which includes the physical world and the metaphysical world (including a person's state of happiness.. his psychology.. spirituality). Now, with the physical world we are able to acquire sense data -- we are able to measure the physical world. That allows us to improve our method of reasoning.


Reason applies to the physical world and the metaphysical world. It goes like this:

1. A person has a problem -- something he wants to change.
2. He makes guesses about how to solve the problem.
3. He refines his guesses with criticisms.


Science is reason and sense data, and so it only applies to the physical world. It goes like this:

1. A person has a problem -- something he wants to change. [The something is that he doesn't know how physical thing X works and he wants to change that by learning how it works.]
2. He makes [hypotheses] about how to solve the problem.
3. He refines his [hypotheses] with criticisms [and experiments]. [Note that experiments are criticisms that include sense data.]


Psycho-epistemology (which I'm using in place of 'spirituality') is reason, and it focuses on people's psychology with the premise that a person's philosophy causes his psychology/attitude.

1. A person has a problem -- something he wants to change. [The something is a conflict between his inexplicit knowledge (e.g. emotions, gut feelings, etc.) and his explicit knowledge.] And he wants to change that resolving the conflict.]
2. He makes guesses about how to solve the problem.
3. He refines his guesses with criticism.


To be clear, in step 1 we are guessing at what our problems are. We have to refine those with criticism too.

Here's a longer version of that:

(1) What is the problem? In other words, "what are you searching for?"

(2) Why is it a problem? In other words, "why do you need/want it?"

(3) What are/were your proposed solutions? In other words, what are your "best guesses"? These are the guesses that you did real life testing on.

(4) What are your outstanding criticisms of your proposed solutions? In other words, "why [do] you think those proposed solutions didn't work?"

(5) What are your attempted criticisms of the problem? For example, have you considered that maybe you don't need to do X since there's another way Y that meets the same goal as X?

(6) What are your attempted criticisms of the idea of working on that problem right now? For example, is there something else of higher priority that you should be working on instead?


Note that in this version, I've omitted the fact that all of our answers to these questions are guesses. And remember that guesses are iteratively refined with criticism. Also, even the questions themselves are just guesses. We do not have omniscient sources of knowledge. We never reach perfection.

For more on guesses, and the relationship between wild guesses and best guesses, read this essay.

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Why do people demand evidence?

Evidence cannot "support" a theory. So what's the point of "demanding evidence" in response to someone asserting a theory?

It doesn't make sense to say that a theory can be supported by evidence. All evidence can do is refute classes of theories. So at best some evidence can refute a huge class of theories leaving a few theories unrefuted, aka supported.

So when someone says "I demand that you present evidence [supporting your theory]," what that really means is "I demand that you present evidence that refutes *all* other possible theories, leaving just one theory, the one that you're asserting is true."

Note that its impossible to refute *all* other possible theories, because that's an infinite set, and we only have finite time. So its a demand that is impossible to satisfy.

In other words, ideas are innocent until proven guilty. And demanding evidence in response to someone asserting a theory means believing that ideas are guilty until proven innocent.

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On a tangent, someone said: "We cannot, nor are we ever called upon to prove a negative."

Me: "I agree that we cannot prove a negative. What I'm saying is that we also cannot prove a positive."

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Back to Let's start from the beginning

Telling people what to do doesn't work.

Telling people what to do (or what to think) doesn't work. It encourages people to stop thinking about a problem and just taking your word for it that your idea is the solution. So it encourages irresponsibility. It encourages dependence.

An alternative is to ask questions that help the person to find a solution on his own, one that he agrees with. It means that he's responsible. It means independence.

And by filling the role of helper -- a parent to his child or a boss to his employee -- you have made yourself responsible for helping the person create solutions to (some of) his problems -- some of those problems are shared problems in that they affect both parent and child, boss and employee.

So here's an example. Heather comes to her boss Jim and asks "how do I do computer thing X?" Jim answers "google that whole question you just asked me." She did and she solved the problem in minutes. Weeks later she asks Jim the same form of question with a little bit different X. Jim answers with the exact same answer "google that whole question you just asked me." And this happened more times too.


Here's a way to do it using questions designed to help Heather explain the context of her problem and whatever she's already figured out about solving her problem.

Heather asks Jim "how do I do computer thing X?" Jim asks "what have you tried so far?" [With this question he intends to find out what other stuff she did before coming to him, other proposed solutions that she thought about and refuted or that she tried and failed.]

Lets say she says "well I don't know how to do X and i don't know how to search for that." Jim answers "well you could try some wild guesses [1] and refine your guesses with criticism [2] for say 1 minute because that can turn up some useful results. and then if you still haven't figured it out then come to me and tell me (1) what you're searching for, (2) why you need it, (3) what best guesses you've tried, (4) why you think those didn't work out, (5) whether there is another way to meet the same goal as X, and (6) whether there is another higher priority problem that you should be working on instead."


In terms of problems and solutions...

(1) What is the problem? In other words, "what are you searching for?"

(2) Why is it a problem? In other words, "why do you need/want it?"

(3) What are/were your proposed solutions? In other words, what are your "best guesses"? These are the guesses that you did real life testing on.

(4) What are your outstanding criticisms of your proposed solutions? In other words, "why [do] you think those proposed solutions didn't work?"

(5) What are your attempted criticisms of the problem? For example, have you considered that maybe you don't need to do X since there's another way Y that meets the same goal as X?

(6) What are your attempted criticisms of the idea of working on that problem right now? For example, is there something else of higher priority that you should be working on instead?

The boss/parent should be willing to help child/employee solve his problems -- namely the problems that the child/employee want help from their boss/parent for. In order for him to help he needs to know: (1) what the problem is, (2) why its a problem, (3) what the proposed solutions are/were, (4) what the criticisms of the proposed solutions are, (5) what the attempted criticisms of the problem are, and (6) if some other problem has higher priority than this one.

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[1] See this essay on wild guesses.

[2] A criticism is an explanation of a flaw in an idea. For more on criticism.

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"I hope I am not coming across as rude"

Stranger: well,i hope i am not coming across as mean or rude

Rami: ur saying u hope u didn't come off as rude, but what that really means is that you hope that *i* didn't consider ur actions as rude. why are you concerned about whether or not i consider ur actions rude? do *you* consider ur actions rude?

Stranger: no...but in my way.we do not offend others

Rami: i don't go seeking to offend others either. but i also don't blame myself when others get offended by the truth.

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Guessing

wild guesses vs best guesses


we're just guessing. nothing we think up is better than a guess.

now i'm not saying that we act on wild guesses. instead we act on our best guesses.

our best guesses started out as wild guesses.

i make 1000 wild guesses for every best guess. [btw 1000 is a wild guess.]

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why does this matter?

the wild guesses that did not pass the test are wrong/false. If they were moral ideas, we'd say the actions described in the ideas are *immoral* or *evil*. these are what we call mistakes.

so I make 999 mistakes for every best guess.

its important to notice that these mistakes are being filtered out before the person commits any of the rival ideas to action. this is what we call 'thought experiments'.

a guess starts out as a 'wild guess' and what we do is submit the guess (or theory) to rigorous thought experiments. its a selection process. it selects the 'best guess' from the set of wild guesses.. the needle in the haystack -- the one theory that refutes all of its rivals.

the wild guessing part and the selection process [this part has critical ideas that start out as wild guesses too] works best with more than one person. each person has gaps in their knowledge, and everybody has different gaps.. different blind spots. so by running our ideas by each other (asking for and receiving quality criticism), we are able to leverage each other's expertise.. by covering each other's blind spots.

the guess that survives the thought experiments is the best guess that will be submitted to further testing, e.g. computer model simulation testing, and in real life testing, for example rolling out a product line in one small market which comprises less than 0.1% of a company's customer base.

now our best guesses that survived our thought experiments, and all of the other testing, those are the ones that are put to market. if the product doesn't sell, then the best guess was wrong.. not completely wrong though. its possible there was only a small error and that if it is fixed, then the improved version of the product or initiative would be successful and profitable.

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side note:

i was talking to a young guy about being embarrassed to sell the school newspaper to parents at a school function. and i asked some questions and i started to talk about something similar to the problem above. he's concerned with being turned down. so i explained that if u sell one newspaper, is that good? did somebody learn something? be happy that you got 1 'yes' instead of feeling bad about the 39 'no's u got. take the 'no's and figure out what went wrong with them, and then try to use what you learn in future attempts, so you can improve your yes/no ratio.

and the fact that you're improving means that thinking critically about the 'no's is what led to all your improvement (actually improvement happened during the thought experiments too) -- so what is there to feel bad about the 'no's? the 'no's led to making progress. in other words, progress is impossible without them. -- i also talked to him about stuff like 'why do u care what they think of u? why don't you use those people for your own benefit, to learn, to test out your ideas in real life experiments?'

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someone said: "makes sense, so basically: learn from your mistakes?"

yes. but its more than that. create opportunities that will let you apply your problem solving skills. in doing so, you will make mistakes. then learn from your mistakes -- thus improving your problem solving skills. then repeat.

keep going. keep getting better. there is no limit to your improvement. there is no ceiling.

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someone asked me: "how do i create opportunities?"

get a job -- instead of school. at your job, express your ideas. your boss might like them. and if he doesn't, and if you get fired for it, then great because he's the wrong boss to work for.

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why improve? because this.

what sort of problems does this apply to? ALL!  Even psychological/emotional problems -- find out more here and here.

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