Just read past this again, and you probably won't see my reply, but our brief exchange had triggered another fleeting thought perhaps worth sharing.
There is no reason to believe...
I'm not sure what context you were speaking in, but I have a fairly conservative frame I work with, and that is we know almost nothing. The scientific method does bring us understanding and that's basically a monkey see, monkey do kind of thing where we understand doing a is going to yield b.
Understanding is predictive to a point, and at that point, error exceeds understanding for whatever reason, and we simply don't understand enough to proceed, which drives new science and ultimately, new and improved understanding.
None of that actually invalidates prior understanding. Where understanding is predictive, and it has been validated against the authority; namely, mother nature, it's good understanding! And that all means knowing the limits of understanding is as important as the understanding itself is. Applying our understanding outside it's scope can be worse than ignorance.
Perhaps this is all well trodden ground for you, and I apologize in advance, but it did also highlight "reason to believe", and I just generally don't. For me, there just isn't a lot of room for "believe" in all this. Knowing things is a tall order. Confidence in understanding may just be a technical, formal expression of believing too.
Where we lack understanding, it's a guessing game. We may make pretty good guesses, depending on what understanding we do have and our own nature, intuition and such, and that's fine, even ideal depending on what the scenario is.
Maybe I would go down this road saying something more like, "I suspect" or "these ideas are suggestive", hinting at whatever basis I might have to give an idea greater weight or worth, but indeed! There is no reason to believe anything is true about the universe on basic principle, knowing our current limits and how we arrive at pretty much anything useful.
Later, below you used "unlikely" which suggests to me we get after thoughts like this in a similar way, and it's OK if not, but somehow I felt compelled to just get these reasoning basics out there, out of my head.
Happy New Year, and thanks in advance for entertaining me.
There is no reason to believe...
I'm not sure what context you were speaking in, but I have a fairly conservative frame I work with, and that is we know almost nothing. The scientific method does bring us understanding and that's basically a monkey see, monkey do kind of thing where we understand doing a is going to yield b.
Understanding is predictive to a point, and at that point, error exceeds understanding for whatever reason, and we simply don't understand enough to proceed, which drives new science and ultimately, new and improved understanding.
None of that actually invalidates prior understanding. Where understanding is predictive, and it has been validated against the authority; namely, mother nature, it's good understanding! And that all means knowing the limits of understanding is as important as the understanding itself is. Applying our understanding outside it's scope can be worse than ignorance.
Perhaps this is all well trodden ground for you, and I apologize in advance, but it did also highlight "reason to believe", and I just generally don't. For me, there just isn't a lot of room for "believe" in all this. Knowing things is a tall order. Confidence in understanding may just be a technical, formal expression of believing too.
Where we lack understanding, it's a guessing game. We may make pretty good guesses, depending on what understanding we do have and our own nature, intuition and such, and that's fine, even ideal depending on what the scenario is.
Maybe I would go down this road saying something more like, "I suspect" or "these ideas are suggestive", hinting at whatever basis I might have to give an idea greater weight or worth, but indeed! There is no reason to believe anything is true about the universe on basic principle, knowing our current limits and how we arrive at pretty much anything useful.
Later, below you used "unlikely" which suggests to me we get after thoughts like this in a similar way, and it's OK if not, but somehow I felt compelled to just get these reasoning basics out there, out of my head.
Happy New Year, and thanks in advance for entertaining me.