It's nice to see a scientist take seriously a philosophical problem. In general, the old picture of scientists ignoring or (in a few cases) outright ridiculing philosophy has generally faded from within the professions--scientists often consult philosophers these days, and philosophers consult scientists and make use of the findings of science in their work. But the general public is not as aware of that "new normal" as perhaps they could be, and I think this kind of video does a public good to show that--just as there is a very important place for science and scientific thinking--there is also a very important place for philosophy and philosophical thinking, and the two disciplines are, in the end, not really opposed. They're more like sparring partners, each helping to sharpen and hone the skills of the other as both try to contribute to our understanding of ourselves and the world. Salutations to you for this presentation.
Science relies on philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and methodology. For example, science assumes an objective reality that can be studied through observation and experimentation. It has gotten so old hearing people think faith is an inherently religious word when it isn't and they are conflating an aberration of it, blind faith to it's main definition.
The chicken example was also used in the book "The Black Swan" (he used a turkey) as an analogy for human behavior, arguing that people tend to rely heavily on past experiences to predict the future, ignoring the possibility of highly improbable yet significant and disruptive events.
Can be and has been pretty unfortunate in history too. Any one unlikely thing that's unlikely to happen indeed probably won't, but when you start considering thousands of things with a 0.1% to 1% chance, you actually expect that a few of them *will* happen. The hard part is correctly predicting which those are. But well, as a species we're not so good about simply avoiding similar outcomes to previous generations, let alone predicting new things causing trouble.
eg everyone's believing that climate change won't necessitate significant population decreases or even significant stagnation in growth because "when has that ever happened in modern history" while "modern" barely means even a couple centuries, if even one, in any sense of the word.
I'm not sure that you and others get it. The problem of induction is not just that we can't be certain that the laws of nature will continue. Rather, we can't even say they *probably* will. When I first started studying philosophy it took ages for me to grasp this, though.
My father-in-law used to teach Astronomy to college students, and one day he said "Our sun will become a red giant in about five billion years, and life will end on Earth." A students hand shot up -"When will that happen?" he asked. My father-in law replied "In about five billion years". The student said "that's a relief, I thought you said five MILLION years!" 😀
well, in fact, it makes a huge difference whether the sun expands in 5 million or billion years. Its not so, that she doesn't do that at all for 5 million/billion years and then - bang! Large sun. The Earth will probably be uninhabitable in 500 million years because the temperature of the sun is continually rising. If she were to expand in 5 million years, we would have very little time, perhaps a few thousand years, to respond to it as humanity.
Probably is what that student had in mind. People are smart! The student had a lot of recent contextual stimulation of things changing over long periods of time and would have understood the simple concept of interpolation from current state to future state and rate of change over a given period of time - and easily inferred that even 1 or 5% of that 100% change would change Earth drastically and thus inferred that a small % of 5M y is actually a period of time humanity should start planning for. People are smart and our brains are designed to think in terms of both interpolation and extrapolation.
Dr. Hossenfelder, I have to admit I *never* expected you to cover such a topic…though your candor once you chose to was completely “on-brand”. Your statement that “science is also based on faith…”, and that there’s no more factual proof or certainty of things continuing as-is shook me. I’d never thought of things that way. In hindsight I can’t say why, but there it is. Quite profound.
When you become a blogger, you may as well reason that science is based on faith. Would work for you either way since you will have something to talk about.
Society has never functioned smoothly. Everyone who's ever lived has always thought this way. It is basically kids these days but sounds more sophisticated.
This bottle of Whiskey is an interesting point. Sabine did not say she would give anybody a bottle of whiskey. She said if she was wrong, she would make up for it with a bottle of whiskey. My understanding of that statement is that she would drink it herself to acknowledge she was wrong. Obviously, she would have to wait until after the world had ended to confirm she was wrong, by which point drinking the whiskey would not be possible, so the technicalities of who gets the whiskey loses its relevance🤔🤔
Not necessarily. If it's because the laws of nature change, we really don't know how they will change. Could change in a way that a bottle of whiskey is life saving for her, and dare I say, only her?
You can only find the label on this bottle of Maker's Mark whisky at War Memorial Park. It reads, "Maker's Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky, Handmade, The Last Sailor on Watch of the USS Batfish."
Jack Vance had a short science fiction story in the 1950's called I think "The Men Return" where the laws of causality had changed. The story was about how causality returned and all the "mad" people who had thrived couldn't jump off cliffs or eat rocks anymore.
I remember the story! A short story in a yearbook. I kept thinking about this strange and strangely coherent resolution of the story. Thank you for the name!
..Yes, that was one odd story, the "mad" could walk on clouds, eat rocks, etc. and if the "sane" followed they frequently died or were injured. ..Not sure on the title though.
This is also linked to the “grue problem” and one of the most important (largely open) directions in theoretical machine learning: generalization under distribution shifts! Could you make a video on theory of learning (e.g. Probably approximately correct learning, etc.). I think the average person has a lot to benefit from knowing a formal model of learning. In my opinion, this is fundamental in understanding how science works.
I remember this being a big plot point of the book The Three Body Problem. They give an example of a turkey scientist who observes that they are fed at the same time every day, but when he goes to tell everyone about this supposed law, they are all slaughtered at that time for Thanksgiving.
I remember trying to explain to a classmate of mine back in elementary school why it's *technically* possible that I would suddenly be able to fly like a superman with this same reasoning - just very unlikely. I don't think he ever got it.
Every time you walk into a wall, there is a possibility of you performing a quantum jump and teleport to the other side. The only problem is getting all the quintillion particles in you to agree on performing the jump at the same time, in the correct direction, for the correct distance...
@@SabineHossenfelder I'm not sure that's exactly how your questioner meant his/her question, but it sure did trigger an interesting answer! So thanks for that. 😃 BTW, in the spirit of constructive criticism, I don't think the "Q&A with Sabine" ident is necessary or desirable. Just dive straight in with whatever A you have to a Q! 🙂
It’s pretty odd that this would give you an existential crisis, when the current estimations of 6 degrees Celsius of planetary warning by 2100 overwhelmingly means the end of humanity.
It also depends on how you define "the world". We know with some certainty the Earth will end in 4 billion years or so, but perhaps some small percentage of the world of creatures of that inhabited the Earth will have suceeded in moving to a more hospitable place. So in some sense at least, the world can move and therefore not end anytime soonish.
actually no you dont. you know it will IF things stay as they have been, but who is assuring you of that? there are an infinity of things that can happen that make it so the end of planet earth as we know it will not be by being consumed by the sun.
Sabine, you are such a talented explicator! My fellow nobodies have discussed this faith in induction many times and did a Schrôdinger conclusion and banned further discussion (unless we didn't). High school philosophers since 1956! They're all dead now😮💨I"m the only reliable one. We all presumed we'd wake up every morning...maybe we invented logic from fear of our ending. German philosophers? Yeah!
If we define faith as "believing despite absence of evidence", I wouldn't say science is based on faith. It's kinda like the question of hard solipsism: we can't prove that only my conscience exists and hallucinates everything else, but things work better if we assume that's not the case. Scientists don't have to believe without evidence that the laws of nature will not change, they can even be hard solipsists. But that assumption is necessary for science.
I think it needs to be said that similarly, just because we can't know they won't change, we have no reason to assume that they will change. It's quite simply a question without a real answer.
More importantly, we cant even truly infer that we can't know if things will change or not, due to the fact that we are unable to determine whether or not some time in the future we MAY be able to determine whether or not we can or can't know if the laws of nature will continue to behave the same way or if they'll change.............
This is one of those cases where you're at once technically right but also missing the point completely... The fact that it's a question without a real answer doesn't _absolve_ you from living on and making decisions. _What are those decisions based upon?_
@@vmasing1965 It's called being pragmatic, if some purely theoretical/hypothetical/philosophical possibility for tomorrow's end of the world exists and that throws you off so much that you can't make decisions anymore or live your life altogether then the problem is in your head and not in on the research table.
@@TheLumberjack1987 The whole point is to examine the fundamental principles that you are using to make decisions. If you're not sure what those are and how they work, see: _Gödel's theorem._ The "location of your problem" is an easy cop out, it doesn't explain anything and it doesn't change anything that actually matters.
@@vmasing1965 "doesn't change anything that actually matters" neither does losing your mind over hypothetical unfalsifiable doomsday scenarios in case "all of physics collapses tomorrow". You can philosophize and lose your sleep over it your whole life and you will have accomplished absolutely nothing. But hey, you do you buddy, your sleepless nights over nothing do not have any repercussions for my life, go catch that pink dragon!
@@Hendrik_F because the laws of nature are absolut. if you lift a pebble and dtop it on your foot you will see its the same result how often you want to repeat it. that said science is not what people believe it is. science is what still is true after the last human is gone. that excludes a lot socalled sciences.
@@nalusan The moment you add human perception into it, things very quickly becomes relative. And since everything we do is in the end interpreted via our human perceptions somehow or another, it is quite difficult to completely avoid this. Thinking that we can 100% rise above our own perceptions would be 100% arrogance. I know we try to do our best to minimize this in science, but it will never be perfect, and hence some amount of relativity always ends up sticking around. But ah well, we get it good enough that we have managed to build scyscrapers that doesn't collapse, so I guess it is close enough for most practical purposes.
It's completely pointless to worry about whether or not the laws of nature will change at any given moment. Just as pointless as having faith in anything.
Scientific faith in induction is radically different from religious faith: we can happily and safely choose to reject religious beliefs, but it’s impossible to reject our instinctual faith in induction. And if we could, we wouldn’t survive one hour, e.g., stepping in front of racing cars, stepping off of skyscrapers, etc.
That still doesn't justify sciences assumptions. Such as science assumes the future will resemble the past, our human senses are reliable to discover objective truths of reality, or that there's cause and effect relationships between events. The uniformity of nature is assumed and science uses induction to validate it, which induction isn't logically certain for its premises to equal its conclusion. Science assumes that events have cause and effect but it can't prove it. Science shows there are casual relationships between events but that doesn't logically conclude anything. If I say "if I drop this apple from my hand, then it will fall, because gravity causes this object to be pulled down". This is assumed based on past empirical data and not logical certainty. Also it assumes that laws of gravity cause that object to behave that way but it only shows there is a casual link between the two. Lastly, we say our senses are reliable to discern objective truth from falsities. How can we justify that our 5 senses are validated to say there is an external reality at all? How do you know this isn't a simulation in your head and the programmer can input any parameters in reality as they please? Science doesn't prove anything, it only gives us it's best guess based on the evidence it gathers.
If the chicken had investigated further perhaps he or she would have discovered that "farmer will not chop off head" is not a fundamental law. For a chicken inside the 1972 arcade game Pong, playing as Player 1, the fundamental law is the game code; "Player 2 will not beat me" is _not_ a fundamental law, it's merely a winning streak. The point is that if your model of the world fails to make predictions correctly, then - if you are still alive - you revise the model (the chicken's model was excessively simplistic, superficial). But a model - even a good one - has no verifiable independent reality: it's just a tool used to make predictions about the only thing that we have direct knowledge of: phenomena, via sense-perception (in contradistinction to noumena, things as they are in themselves, which are unknowable). One wants a model that is elegant and does a good job at making predictions. It might be possible to construct a flat-earth model that could make predictions, but such a model would have to include a large number of inelegant "hacks." An example of such a contrivance would be: "when you reach the right edge, a purple demon transports you to the left edge without you knowing it." Some kind of hack like this would be required to correctly predict the repeatedly empirically observed circumnavigation phenomenon: the fact that if you keep sailing east for long enough you seem to wind up back where you started. So if you want correct predictions you have to either take the flat earth model with lots of inelegant hacks, or you use the more elegant round earth model. But these are just models used to make predictions. We know nothing of this supposed "Earth" as it might exist as a thing in itself; this "Earth" is merely an object in our model which we employ to make predictions about sense perception. The point of the chicken story is that if tomorrow our sense perception hints at the existence of a purple demon who tends to transport people when they reach a certain longitudinal line (if we actually see this happen), then maybe we will have to update our model to the one where the earth is flat and there is a purple demon. The model that was formerly considered to be excessively convoluted is necessary now that we see the purple demon flying around all over the place and transporting people. Another example: If you wake up in one of those pods shown in the movie "The Matrix," then you will have to revise your model of the world. Waking up in the pod is analogous to the seeing the purple demon doing his transport trick. But until such time when you wake up in the pod (or have other evidence of living in a computer simulation), you can continue to use the simpler model which does not involve living in a computer simulation, because the living-in-the-Matrix model is excessively complicated and inelegant, if it does not explain/predict any phenomena that could not also be explained/predicted by the simpler and more elegant model which does not involve living in a computer simulation. The all-encompassing computer simulation, like the purple demon running round a flat earth, is a redundant, unnecessary, inelegant component of the prediction model - until the day when you wake up in the pod (but that day may never come).
All scientists have philosophical presuppositions. Those who claim they do not, that science is just science, have simply internalized the presuppositions they had received, without analyzing them
As a mathematician, I know for a fact that all axiomatic models produce paradoxes, it was proven previous centuries. Thus all Mathematical models are inherently unreliable and we use them based on faith they are good enough for current applications. I think human logic and reasoning is fundamentally flawed or incomplete, that's why we are incapable of constructing non self contradicting theoretical models.
But... she's wrong. According to science (which she should know), in 500 million to 1 billion years from now, life will pretty much be kaput on this planet. And in about 5 billion years, our planet may well be swallowed up by the sun as it becomes a red giant. That's still a lot of time, but it's not a hundred billion years as she stated. Can't believe she made this mistake.
The real point here is that you can either assume the laws of nature will or will not change. If you assume they will not you build shelters, learn where the wildebeest migrate, develop technology, go to the moon and get addicted to smart phones. Your only other option is to suppose the laws of nature will capriciously change at any moment. I'm not sure how taking that approach is going to help you try to make your life better. It's not so much faith, rather the only pragmatic strategy.
Sure all of existence might come crashing down at any given moment. That's why we need to keep learning and striving to do bigger and better things so when that day comes we can either stop it or get out of the way. Or as Dylan Thomas said "Do not go gentle into that good night"
@@robertdeland3390 How do you know no one will think something up and find a way? We are human after all, the word impossible is nothing more than a challenge to many of us...other wise we would not see new attempts at perpetual motion all the time.
I wish that you would have mentioned something about falsifiability and Karl Popper. I have read that most scientists see empirical falsifiability as being a demarcation point between faith & science, in particular, religious beliefs, of which there are practically an infinite number, none of which are testable.
Hyposthese cannot be proven, only falsified. But the purpose of a hypothesis is to propose a statement of a law of nature. That's what science aims at. If science does not aim at that, it is meaningless. So just because hypotheses cannot be proven does not imply science does not involve and depend upon faith in the laws of nature.
It's important to remember that science is pointless without the assumption that the laws of nature will remain the same. Imagine trying to play chess if the rules about how the individual pieces can be moved changed without notice.
There is also Laplace's Rule of Succession, a way to calculate the probability that the world is going to end tomorrow (assuming that's a Bernoulli trial).
It will end when we damage the ecosystem so much that civilization ends… It will end when the sun runs out of hydrogen/helium…. It will end when the Big Univeral rip occurs… And it will essentially end when you die ( from your perspective)…
Every counter example always uses a person. You ever notice that? The lady walks by the bakery every day at 8am, the farmer always feeds the chicken, Alice is trustworthy so bob should loan the money etc etc.
I think faith is not the correct term. While it is true that we cannot prove absolutely that the laws of nature will work tomorrow, each day when we wake up we add another sample to dataset, increasing our statistical confidence that they will. It may not ever be absolute but it tends towards it. This is not faith, it just the most sensible position.
I think a lot of people are going to misunderstand the technicality 'based on faith'. A better way to phrase this is that we can place a lot of confidence in our very high Bayesian priors that the laws of physics will continue.
Love how all the little worms start wriggling desperately whenever the word faith is mentioned. Let me say it again, yes, it's most definitely the same thing. Faith is the true postulate present in every mathematical/logical system. Ask daddy Gödel, he knows I'm right.
But a calculation of probability still depends upon the assumption that regularities in the past will continue to hold in the future. And what sense does it make to ask, not, will such and such an event happen, but, will such and such a pattern continue? Do probability calculations have anything to do with the latter?
Thank you for this! I keep arguing this exact point with people who say "but science doesn't need to belive in anything, you just have to look". But you do have to have faith that nature exists for real and has laws that are unchanging everywhere. To be clear, I do believe in science but from a philosophical point of view I don't think it is any more justifiable than any other belief system.
Science, even the one based on the assumption that the laws of nature don't change, produces certifiable and falsifiable data on how the World works, so it's false to put the two in the same category to begin with. Plus, it produce these result if we believe in them being capable of change or not and that is the crucial difference.
@@yeroca You could argue the scientific model was also provably false at many points in history though, how often are we absolutely certain of something only to discover how wrong we were once technology evolved enough to prove it? Just because stories from religious texts can often be debunked as fairy tales, doesn't mean none of the events described in the bible happened. I've always seen it this way; Religion is built on a foundation of faith, science is a pyramid with faith at the very top.. You can live your whole life learning lessons from reality in the science pyramid and never even realise or question how much faith one has to have to continue living there because there's plenty to observe and it all seems to check out On the flip side, the religious space is somewhere you almost cannot enter without first abandoning "realism" and accepting it as a faith-based model (which both systems are) from the start cause there really isn't as much to see with your own eyes... Lessons learned there originate in introspection rather than observation and are supposed to be integrated back into reality later, without ever questioning that faith In both scenarios, questioning that which we cannot know causes the downfall of the belief system. The main difference is in HOW one comes to accept that faith.
Well technically God isn't provably false, since He exists outside of the material world. But of course we Christians can't rely on the argument 'you can't prove God doesn't exist' as a scientific proof. If a stranger tells you that they have experienced a miracle (which would be a discreet and localized breaking of the laws of nature), and your assumption is that 'the laws of nature will continue the way they currently work', then obviously you might think they are lying. Certainly you don't want to believe everything that everyone tells you because across the religions there are contradictory statements. So it becomes easier to assume religion is all lies. However even in the scientific world the issue of 'what is truth' arises because the dominant scientific institutions are not immune to human corruption and oversight. There are a lot of people who love science but who talk about their disappointment with being pushed towards corporate 'for profit only' science versus actually doing something exciting or beneficial. Then there are problems with bloating of poorly done scientific research for the sole purpose of funding grants, established dogma (see SHs critique of particle physics), and the heavy influence of political ideologies or agendas which has caused massive distrust from the public. And just like when church and state was a problem, now the institutions and state are a problem for anyone who opposes the dominant 'scientifically backed' political narrative. And unfortunately a political narrative can be something like 'religion is false, we should abandon it, and science is the only way to find truth'. Even though science is reliable it's not a catch all when it's distorted by politics and the inevitable lies involved in human pursuits of power. This is why many Christians are excited when Jesus says 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life'.
But that is missing the point. What do we mean by "reasonable"? Does it mean we have a reason? But what is the reason we believe that regularities in the past will continue to be in effect in the future? Hume explained very clearly that we can give no reason for this. And yet, it does seem "unreasonable" to deny it. But what makes it "unreasonable"? This is something we really can't give a reason for.
@@jeremysmith1585 I think Hume explained that we can give no "proof" for this, unlike proving mathematical theorems. I would hold that extensive observations of physical regularities (leading to what physicists call "laws" that are provisionally accepted) are prior evidence in the Bayesian sense, leading to reasonable expectations. It's not proof, and your expectations can later be shown to not cover all the cases you envisioned, but at least an estimate based on prior evidence can set a probability limit on begin wrong. Faith is not like that.
@@Ken00001010 I've read a little about Bayesian probability, but can you help me with this: what do you mean by "prior evidence in the Bayesian sense"?
@@Ken00001010 And it may be that the problem Hume pointed out is deeper than that. There may be occasions that are not envisioned...such as, the laws of nature changing. Maybe they do change! But how do you calcuate the probability of something like that? But here is the case that Hume really envisioned and Sabine is talking about: what if there are no regularities at all? That there is some regularity that it makes sense to even estimate using probability...that is in fact a matter of faith, which really works no differently from faith in God, or at least the God of the philosophers who is the conscious agent responsible for the laws of nature being in effect. A distinction can be drawn between faith that there is some regularity, and the rational conclusion that if there is some regularity it must be due to a universal conscious agent. So one might have the first faith without drawing the rational conclusion.
Okay I got the video being about us believing the world is not gonna end tomorrow because we put our faith in the laws of nature. But isn't this a bit of a clickbait to title the video that "Science itself is based on faith"? Science is based on facts and I got sacred for a moment on seeing the UA-cam notification; I thought you're bringing religious faith into science
What is the faith that science is based on? It is the faith that the universe is such that events that occur follow patterns that are fixed. But this leads to more questions. If they are fixed, what sort of entities are they? They are not facts in the sense of this or that event. And they are not individual things like atoms or people, which are subject to these laws or patterns. But they do exist somehow. What sort of entity is this which is neither an event nor an individual thing? And how is it that the events always obey these patterns or laws? The only reasonable conclusion is that non-physical universal entities called laws exist, and that they power over those events. But if the laws really are laws, the fact that they continue, and the fact that events follow them, cannot be by accident or brute fact. It is only rational to believe that events follow laws if a mind knows the laws and has power to subject the events to the laws. In other words, the lawfulness of nature is a conclusive argument for the existence of God. And without belief in the existence of God, trust in the laws of the nature, and search for those laws, makes little sense. Perhaps this is the reason that physics is reaching the impasse Sabine talks about.
Science is NOT based on faith, but on experience. The problem of induction is about whether or not scientific belief is about absolute truth. It’s not of practical concern.
Science is great and I am more than thankful for the achievements. spreading lies about the origin of life and the world in order to attack people with faith in God, is not science. It is deception. Nevertheless it is happening constantly, in the name of science. Thankfully, the majority of Earth's population can't be deceived and has faith in God. But it leaves a bad taste. Besides bad consequences.
Hi Sabine. A fan here. I enjoy your vids, especially when they are about physics because your expertise shines. But I agree partially with you. Yes, we can't know if we are a brain in a vat or a computer simulation. But in the end, we have to assume that our senses are somewhat reliable or science will crumble. The solipsistic argument takes you nowhere. If you can't rely on anything then we can't make any progress. And we have a long history of success that we build upon that assumption. And that's evidence that our assumption is working so far. Yes, the farmer can come and chop our heads off tomorrow, but then what's left to care about that you were wrong? So, the assumption that the laws of nature aren't constant takes us nowhere, unless we see evidence otherwise it's a good assumption. It's not faith.
What you said at the beginning: "The world as we know it depends on..." reminded me of a quote I like: "The causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about which depend upon causes we know absolutely nothing about." ~Tom Stoppard 👨🎓
I think she has said something about it in passing. I think her position is, we'll figure it out eventually... but I might be wrong. It is a fascinating topic indeed.
@@vmasing1965 Just rewatched a video on "Closer to the Truth" titled "What's the Deep Meaning of Probability?" Sabine touches briefly on "fine tuning" in that. Worth watching in any case, she's mind-blowingly smart.
Reminds me of the Three Body Problem books. Both the induction problem, and the laws of physics ... suddenly ceasing to work. As for the question, I would refer to the infinite monkey theorem and answer, "Well duh, the question is when." Our civilization already obtained weapons of complete annihilation, now it's just a matter of time till the correct people on a correct day end up waking up in a bad mood.
It's perhaps worse than that. There's a non-trivial number of people in AI research who suspect that the competition over who makes AGI first will almost certainly result in a non-aligned AGI that bides its time before killing us all to prevent interference with some instrumental goal it has.
I contend that monkeys are terrible typists, and that they'd never produce any works because they are likely to very poorly produce random characters. Bad monkey! Bad monkey! errr at least non-stochastic monkey!
Every past civilization has ended in one manner or another, ultimately ours will too (I know, this is inductive reasoning, there is a finite, do't know how small, that we will continue until the sun becomes giant). The only questions are when, and if every country in the world is involved at the same time.
In the Three Body Problem books the mutually assured destruction stalemate breaks down when one side assumes that the other is too rational (and/or weak/complacent) to retaliate and attacks anyway. They assume wrong with catastrophic results. Any sign of weakness or backing down can be more dangerous than carrying on the standoff.
The paper published by M.I.T. a few decades ago had several economists look at how long human civilization will continue until the biosphere collapses, and a review of that paper a few months ago (October 2023) shows that the projections in that paper are "right on schedule."
Sabine, I wish you explore more about what you mean by faith . C being a constant regardless of frame of observation isn't something you need to take on faith because it can be repeatedly tested and observed. Just because there is no way to empirically prove that C will never change doesn't mean that we have to take it on faith that C is a constant. Yes, we don't know for sure that the world will continue to exist in the exact current state it does today but we live as if we do because there is no alternative. That's not the same faith as believing in a personal creator and savior who will accept you into heaven for eternal bliss if you just believe. Because there are plenty of alternative to the second kind of faith.
I would argue that "faith" is the wrong word. We might take things like the laws of physics continuing on in the next moment as axiomatic for the sake of discussion, but that's not necessarily an article of "faith". "Faith" is an irrefutable assumption because there's an emotional rationale for "believing". I don't think any good scientist would claim that the laws of physics will continue as an irrefutable assumption. I'm fairly certain there are many physicists believe they won't hold forever (the big rip?).
Why not? You just have to assume, that the universe is "good" so far. Isn´t that properly, too, since it exists for about 14 billion years already? And it´s not in conflict with science at all.
I disagree in the use of the word "faith" here because this use of "scientific faith," when contrasted with "religious faith" is comparing two unlike things. True, induction isn't a good way to prove things in terms of mathematical rigor, but it's a pretty good way to predict what will happen next given a set of assumptions. Given enough evidence, those predictions end up being right a ridiculous amount of the time. Religious faith, on the other hand, lacks this predictive power. It's not the same thing at all. I realize that Ms. Hossenfelder makes this point with her wager at the end, but the ambiguity in the use of "faith" in both scientific and religious domains makes science seem closer to religion than it really is.
I love this channel! It's great to sit and learn! I love that experience! It's like being a kid.... not in school, but when you were learning something you had a real passion for. That kind of feeling!
There's quite a gulf between the assumption that laws will continue to operate as previously observed and 'assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen'. The key thing being observation. Faith can be a very broad term, and for anyone wanting to be precise, best avoided so that concepts using different definitions of 'faith' don't become conflated.
Both wrong (as in: not applicable) Faith, in this instance is simply a postulate present in any mathematical system (ref: Gödel's theorem). If we go really specific, those postulates can be vey different for different systems. Lucky to us, Christianity decided Laws of Nature is the Creator's book we humans should read to get to know Him. Unlike in Islam, for example, where they decided Allah is above any laws, including the laws of Nature. Therefore, all he does is pure magic and it's pointless for a human being to even try to understand any of it. You can see the consequences of those two paths, two cultures, laid out right in front of you... All you have is just ignorance and thanklessness.
I understand the point but using the term "faith" to describe having any epistemology at all can be very misleading to people who then think that means it is logically consistent for them to believe in supernatural stuff along with science because it's also "faith". It's a confusion between two senses of the word.
Science isn't based on faith at all. If any fundamental principle we take as truth is proven to be wrong, we rejoice. We review our concepts and adopt new paradigms, until something else prove it wrong too. And that's not faith. Faith is keeping a believe system in place no matter all facts that prove it wrong.
Faith is having complete confidence in someone or something. Science doesn't prove anything. It relies on induction to make claims. Nothing about science claims is logically certain. Science functions in a pragmatic way but not a discovering truth way. Science relies on the presuppositions that there's an external world (science can't prove or disprove this), that nature is uniform through time and space (science can't prove or disprove this), that events have a cause and effect relationship (science can't prove or disprove), and that there are no supernatural forces that can willfully change the laws of nature at anytime (science can't prove or disprove). All the ASSUMPTIONS are just that, assumptions. We as humans make these assumptions because we have to have a starting point. But that does not mean these presuppositions are true. If I say "If I let go of this apple in my hand, then it will fall due to gravity". This is an example of induction. Science is saying "Every instance of this object (apple) ,or similar objects, being let go from the grip of my hand, it will most likely fall because every time in the past that has happened so therefore we have really good evidence to make the prediction that it will happen in the future. So many people make the mistake (in my opinion) that science is in the business of making objective truth claims. It's in the business to make predictions and to lay out the patterns that we observe in our experiences of life. If I'm wrong about anything please let me know what you think. To sum it all up, science relies on the assumptions that 1. The external world is real 2. That nature is uniform across space and time 3. The past wasn't created 5 minutes ago 4. There are other conscious minds other than my own 5. Every known event has a cause 6. There are no supernatural powers that can intervene with the natural world These are all assumptions that science makes in order to make sense of our world around us BUT it does not mean it's objective truth just because it works for us
Let me make my argument against what you said You stated "science isn't based on faith at all" Please PROVE to me with absolute certainty that the statement is true Let me provide some reasons why science is a faith based system Science presupposes the external world is real (Can't be proven true or false by science), science presupposes that natures laws are uniform across time and space (Can't be proven true or false by science), science presupposes that the past wasn't created 5 minutes ago (Can't be proven true or false by science), and science presupposes that events have a cause and effect relationship with each other (Can't be proven true or false by science). All these are ASSUMPTIONS that we claim are true so that science has a foundation to make its conclusions. None of these can't be proved by science, we have FAITH in these assumptions. Science relies on induction which isn't logically certain for its conclusions to match its premises. If I'm wrong, then please provide proof that these aren't assumptions but can't actually be true or false by science. I'm not saying science isn't pragmatic but I don't think anyone can justify science claims with absolute certainty that the claims are truthful. These aren't random statements I'm making up either. Many philosophers and scientists understand the assumptions and presuppositions that science makes because we have to have a foundation for the method and it has to make sense to us.
Just a thing about the Pauli Exclusion Principle. You don't really need it. You just need the probability amplitude from the wave function. It tells you that the amplitude for two fermions being in the same state is zero.
It's a survival adaptation. It's one thing to manage the negative effects of fear but if you would be born completely without this reflex, you'd simply ignore the situations that require your full attention and die way sooner than the rest of us. Don't adapt slogans without thinking it over yourself...
@@vmasing1965 what slogan did I adapt oh wise man? Tell me how wise you are thanks for the psychology lesson thank God I was at a cliffside and almost jumped until I read your amazing break down of evolutionary psychology. Fuck you
Is the difference between the way people talk about personal death and a collective end purely due to our genes screaming at us? We all know that our personal world will end, but the thought of everybody else's ending at the same time seems worse to many people.
No no no. That’s not faith, which is the excuse people give when they don’t have evidence for a belief. Science relies on reasonable expectations. Every observation is that the laws are consistent. So we derive a high degree of certainty. Nothing is 100% (faith is). We use statistics to quantify uncertainty. It’s not faith. It’s not blind trust. It is mountains of evidence /observation/ experimentation that lead to a high degree certainty.
There are people who regard Sabine Hossenfelder as an always trustworthy voice of reason. However, professing faith in this way will knock her down a notch in many people's eyes. She has clearly not thought the subject of "faith" through sufficiently. "Faith" (belief without evidence or when faced with contradictory evidence, and held in spite of any seemingly valid argument against it) is the enemy of science. The title alone will inspire contempt in many people.
I don't really think that technollogical civilizations last more than 200 or 300 years before destroying themselves. That's the solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Sadly, I agree with you. Maybe we’re wrong; but I think it’s more than 50% likely we’re right. But maybe we won’t all die, we’ll certainly destroy civilization and advanced technology - that’s for sure - but maybe, given the fact there are 8B of us, a remnant of our species will scrape by. Their descendants will be living in caves or in trees. We’re not going to be sending Captain Kirk out to explore distant galaxies. That’s for sure.
Induction is not purely faith. Mathematical induction proves general validity of an assertion by rigorous reasoning. Non mathematical induction by experience alone is probabistic projection of known experimental data.
Yes, however when we talk about faith in the realm of theology and analytical philosophy we are usually talking about the blind faith. Faith with no supporting evidence or scientific theories. I don't know that the sun will rise tomorrow =/= Divine intervention.
Today I learned that when an youtuber says "make sure you're subscribed" its because you sometimes need to make sure youre subscribed. Ive been watching Sabine for several months and discovered today that i wasn't subscribed yet. So make sure you're subscribed.
It's nice to see a scientist take seriously a philosophical problem. In general, the old picture of scientists ignoring or (in a few cases) outright ridiculing philosophy has generally faded from within the professions--scientists often consult philosophers these days, and philosophers consult scientists and make use of the findings of science in their work. But the general public is not as aware of that "new normal" as perhaps they could be, and I think this kind of video does a public good to show that--just as there is a very important place for science and scientific thinking--there is also a very important place for philosophy and philosophical thinking, and the two disciplines are, in the end, not really opposed. They're more like sparring partners, each helping to sharpen and hone the skills of the other as both try to contribute to our understanding of ourselves and the world. Salutations to you for this presentation.
Science itself depends on certain philosophical postulates. Many scientists still refuse to acknowledge this or just ignore the fact.
Science relies on philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality, knowledge, and methodology. For example, science assumes an objective reality that can be studied through observation and experimentation. It has gotten so old hearing people think faith is an inherently religious word when it isn't and they are conflating an aberration of it, blind faith to it's main definition.
The chicken example was also used in the book "The Black Swan" (he used a turkey) as an analogy for human behavior, arguing that people tend to rely heavily on past experiences to predict the future, ignoring the possibility of highly improbable yet significant and disruptive events.
Can be and has been pretty unfortunate in history too. Any one unlikely thing that's unlikely to happen indeed probably won't, but when you start considering thousands of things with a 0.1% to 1% chance, you actually expect that a few of them *will* happen. The hard part is correctly predicting which those are.
But well, as a species we're not so good about simply avoiding similar outcomes to previous generations, let alone predicting new things causing trouble.
eg everyone's believing that climate change won't necessitate significant population decreases or even significant stagnation in growth because "when has that ever happened in modern history" while "modern" barely means even a couple centuries, if even one, in any sense of the word.
I'm not sure that you and others get it. The problem of induction is not just that we can't be certain that the laws of nature will continue. Rather, we can't even say they *probably* will. When I first started studying philosophy it took ages for me to grasp this, though.
@@Existentialist946This!
@@Existentialist946 Philosophy doesn't speak to probabilities, Gnt C.
My father-in-law used to teach Astronomy to college students, and one day he said "Our sun will become a red giant in about five billion years, and life will end on Earth." A students hand shot up -"When will that happen?" he asked. My father-in law replied "In about five billion years". The student said "that's a relief, I thought you said five MILLION years!" 😀
zoinkx
@@marcusbeauruh-roh!!
well, in fact, it makes a huge difference whether the sun expands in 5 million or billion years. Its not so, that she doesn't do that at all for 5 million/billion years and then - bang! Large sun. The Earth will probably be uninhabitable in 500 million years because the temperature of the sun is continually rising. If she were to expand in 5 million years, we would have very little time, perhaps a few thousand years, to respond to it as humanity.
@@thomasmartin7524 Yes, I'm sure that what was what the student had in mind. 🙄
It makes no difference.
Probably is what that student had in mind. People are smart! The student had a lot of recent contextual stimulation of things changing over long periods of time and would have understood the simple concept of interpolation from current state to future state and rate of change over a given period of time - and easily inferred that even 1 or 5% of that 100% change would change Earth drastically and thus inferred that a small % of 5M y is actually a period of time humanity should start planning for. People are smart and our brains are designed to think in terms of both interpolation and extrapolation.
Thank you! I've been saying this for years! But, you said it far better!
Dr. Hossenfelder, I have to admit I *never* expected you to cover such a topic…though your candor once you chose to was completely “on-brand”. Your statement that “science is also based on faith…”, and that there’s no more factual proof or certainty of things continuing as-is shook me. I’d never thought of things that way. In hindsight I can’t say why, but there it is. Quite profound.
When you become a blogger, you may as well reason that science is based on faith. Would work for you either way since you will have something to talk about.
Thanks for adding another existential dread to my list of existential fears.
Tautology?
@@gamblerofrats Well, not exactly, The first one is an object that is entering the second one which is a list of said objects.
let's go hug, the existential sheet brother
I find a lot of peace in it considering how much suffering there is in this reality exactly because of the laws of nature.
Beautiful ❤️. As a chicken 🐔 will I lose my head on the morrow at 9:00?
Walking in the valley of the shadow of death...I do fear evil.
How about: I get the feeling that society will not function smoothly for much longer- is it just me?
At the very least there's two of us...
@@ConontheBinarian Touché
@@SabineHossenfelder Good to see you, shame about the circumstances.
Society has never functioned smoothly. Everyone who's ever lived has always thought this way. It is basically kids these days but sounds more sophisticated.
Which one?
Confidence in previous observations is not faith. Faith is belief without evidence
This bottle of Whiskey is an interesting point. Sabine did not say she would give anybody a bottle of whiskey. She said if she was wrong, she would make up for it with a bottle of whiskey. My understanding of that statement is that she would drink it herself to acknowledge she was wrong. Obviously, she would have to wait until after the world had ended to confirm she was wrong, by which point drinking the whiskey would not be possible, so the technicalities of who gets the whiskey loses its relevance🤔🤔
Not necessarily. If it's because the laws of nature change, we really don't know how they will change. Could change in a way that a bottle of whiskey is life saving for her, and dare I say, only her?
Yes, you are right. The discussion was about the end of the world, not the end of life as we know it @@robertdeland3390
You can only find the label on this bottle of Maker's Mark whisky at War Memorial Park. It reads, "Maker's Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whisky, Handmade, The Last Sailor on Watch of the USS Batfish."
Well then Sabine, I think it important to know which whiskey would be drunk, so I can share that final pleasure simultaneously.
🤓
Jack Vance had a short science fiction story in the 1950's called I think "The Men Return" where the laws of causality had changed. The story was about how causality returned and all the "mad" people who had thrived couldn't jump off cliffs or eat rocks anymore.
I remember the story! A short story in a yearbook. I kept thinking about this strange and strangely coherent resolution of the story. Thank you for the name!
..Yes, that was one odd story, the "mad" could walk on clouds, eat rocks, etc. and if the "sane" followed they frequently died or were injured. ..Not sure on the title though.
This is also linked to the “grue problem” and one of the most important (largely open) directions in theoretical machine learning: generalization under distribution shifts!
Could you make a video on theory of learning (e.g. Probably approximately correct learning, etc.). I think the average person has a lot to benefit from knowing a formal model of learning. In my opinion, this is fundamental in understanding how science works.
I remember this being a big plot point of the book The Three Body Problem. They give an example of a turkey scientist who observes that they are fed at the same time every day, but when he goes to tell everyone about this supposed law, they are all slaughtered at that time for Thanksgiving.
I remember trying to explain to a classmate of mine back in elementary school why it's *technically* possible that I would suddenly be able to fly like a superman with this same reasoning - just very unlikely. I don't think he ever got it.
Every time you walk into a wall, there is a possibility of you performing a quantum jump and teleport to the other side.
The only problem is getting all the quintillion particles in you to agree on performing the jump at the same time, in the correct direction, for the correct distance...
Not to mention the much more probable (but still rare (I hope)) chance for the particles to jump NOT in the same direction or the same distance.
At some point the odds will be zero. Flying off like superman will be zero. Your friend was right
the fact that it will never happen does not determine whether or not it still is a calculable probability.@@SamWilkinsonn
@@SamWilkinsonn You've missed the point. The odds are never exactly zero. Just vanishingly small. Effectively zero is not exactly zero.
This was equal parts interesting and unnerving. Thank you for my newfound existential crisis!
been there done that 😅
2:40 all the more reason to cherish the moments of existence, here and now. The present 🎁🥺
@@SabineHossenfelder I'm not sure that's exactly how your questioner meant his/her question, but it sure did trigger an interesting answer! So thanks for that. 😃
BTW, in the spirit of constructive criticism, I don't think the "Q&A with Sabine" ident is necessary or desirable. Just dive straight in with whatever A you have to a Q! 🙂
It’s pretty odd that this would give you an existential crisis, when the current estimations of 6 degrees Celsius of planetary warning by 2100 overwhelmingly means the end of humanity.
Not at all, not at all!
Errrr..... you did like the Mad Max movies, righr?@@Bluesine_R
It also depends on how you define "the world". We know with some certainty the Earth will end in 4 billion years or so, but perhaps some small percentage of the world of creatures of that inhabited the Earth will have suceeded in moving to a more hospitable place. So in some sense at least, the world can move and therefore not end anytime soonish.
According to a new study its very likely earth will no evaporate in the sun, even in the red giant stage.
Oh yes, first we must define both "end" and "world"
@@Name-ot3xw : when i die, MY "World" will "End" .... fact
I wonder about the journey of the leftovers, not about the speed.
actually no you dont. you know it will IF things stay as they have been, but who is assuring you of that? there are an infinity of things that can happen that make it so the end of planet earth as we know it will not be by being consumed by the sun.
the world may not end, but humanity might end itself faster
Don't think so
Just what I needed to know before Monday starts.
Sabine, you are such a talented explicator! My fellow nobodies have discussed this faith in induction many times and did a Schrôdinger conclusion and banned further discussion (unless we didn't). High school philosophers since 1956! They're all dead now😮💨I"m the only reliable one. We all presumed we'd wake up every morning...maybe we invented logic from fear of our ending. German philosophers?
Yeah!
If the world ends tomorrow, I'll be looking for you Sabina.
If we define faith as "believing despite absence of evidence", I wouldn't say science is based on faith. It's kinda like the question of hard solipsism: we can't prove that only my conscience exists and hallucinates everything else, but things work better if we assume that's not the case.
Scientists don't have to believe without evidence that the laws of nature will not change, they can even be hard solipsists. But that assumption is necessary for science.
I think it needs to be said that similarly, just because we can't know they won't change, we have no reason to assume that they will change. It's quite simply a question without a real answer.
More importantly, we cant even truly infer that we can't know if things will change or not, due to the fact that we are unable to determine whether or not some time in the future we MAY be able to determine whether or not we can or can't know if the laws of nature will continue to behave the same way or if they'll change.............
This is one of those cases where you're at once technically right but also missing the point completely...
The fact that it's a question without a real answer doesn't _absolve_ you from living on and making decisions.
_What are those decisions based upon?_
@@vmasing1965 It's called being pragmatic, if some purely theoretical/hypothetical/philosophical possibility for tomorrow's end of the world exists and that throws you off so much that you can't make decisions anymore or live your life altogether then the problem is in your head and not in on the research table.
@@TheLumberjack1987 The whole point is to examine the fundamental principles that you are using to make decisions. If you're not sure what those are and how they work, see: _Gödel's theorem._
The "location of your problem" is an easy cop out, it doesn't explain anything and it doesn't change anything that actually matters.
@@vmasing1965 "doesn't change anything that actually matters" neither does losing your mind over hypothetical unfalsifiable doomsday scenarios in case "all of physics collapses tomorrow".
You can philosophize and lose your sleep over it your whole life and you will have accomplished absolutely nothing.
But hey, you do you buddy, your sleepless nights over nothing do not have any repercussions for my life, go catch that pink dragon!
I will be waiting for this whiskey, Miss Hossenfelder!!
As usually in science, that's relative. For some the world ends when their favourite cookies are out of stock because the factory burned.
if its relative,its usually not science.
@@nalusan Why can't science be relative (usually)? I know OP probably meant it in a joke-y way, but still
@@Hendrik_F because the laws of nature are absolut. if you lift a pebble and dtop it on your foot you will see its the same result how often you want to repeat it. that said science is not what people believe it is. science is what still is true after the last human is gone. that excludes a lot socalled sciences.
@@nalusan The moment you add human perception into it, things very quickly becomes relative. And since everything we do is in the end interpreted via our human perceptions somehow or another, it is quite difficult to completely avoid this. Thinking that we can 100% rise above our own perceptions would be 100% arrogance.
I know we try to do our best to minimize this in science, but it will never be perfect, and hence some amount of relativity always ends up sticking around. But ah well, we get it good enough that we have managed to build scyscrapers that doesn't collapse, so I guess it is close enough for most practical purposes.
@@DanildFlamme this is 100٪ nonsense. if you read e.g. a voltmeter, where is the perception here? as said,if its not absolute its not science.
It's completely pointless to worry about whether or not the laws of nature will change at any given moment. Just as pointless as having faith in anything.
Induction? More like seduction (by the past)...
I learned something new today.
Thanks Sabine.
Scientific faith in induction is radically different from religious faith: we can happily and safely choose to reject religious beliefs, but it’s impossible to reject our instinctual faith in induction. And if we could, we wouldn’t survive one hour, e.g., stepping in front of racing cars, stepping off of skyscrapers, etc.
That still doesn't justify sciences assumptions. Such as science assumes the future will resemble the past, our human senses are reliable to discover objective truths of reality, or that there's cause and effect relationships between events. The uniformity of nature is assumed and science uses induction to validate it, which induction isn't logically certain for its premises to equal its conclusion. Science assumes that events have cause and effect but it can't prove it. Science shows there are casual relationships between events but that doesn't logically conclude anything. If I say "if I drop this apple from my hand, then it will fall, because gravity causes this object to be pulled down". This is assumed based on past empirical data and not logical certainty. Also it assumes that laws of gravity cause that object to behave that way but it only shows there is a casual link between the two. Lastly, we say our senses are reliable to discern objective truth from falsities. How can we justify that our 5 senses are validated to say there is an external reality at all? How do you know this isn't a simulation in your head and the programmer can input any parameters in reality as they please? Science doesn't prove anything, it only gives us it's best guess based on the evidence it gathers.
didn't think Sabine would go into the Philosophy of Science but here we are
Did you read her last book Existential Physics? She´s deep in.
And we love it
It's philosophy all the way down.
If the chicken had investigated further perhaps he or she would have discovered that "farmer will not chop off head" is not a fundamental law. For a chicken inside the 1972 arcade game Pong, playing as Player 1, the fundamental law is the game code; "Player 2 will not beat me" is _not_ a fundamental law, it's merely a winning streak. The point is that if your model of the world fails to make predictions correctly, then - if you are still alive - you revise the model (the chicken's model was excessively simplistic, superficial). But a model - even a good one - has no verifiable independent reality: it's just a tool used to make predictions about the only thing that we have direct knowledge of: phenomena, via sense-perception (in contradistinction to noumena, things as they are in themselves, which are unknowable).
One wants a model that is elegant and does a good job at making predictions. It might be possible to construct a flat-earth model that could make predictions, but such a model would have to include a large number of inelegant "hacks." An example of such a contrivance would be: "when you reach the right edge, a purple demon transports you to the left edge without you knowing it." Some kind of hack like this would be required to correctly predict the repeatedly empirically observed circumnavigation phenomenon: the fact that if you keep sailing east for long enough you seem to wind up back where you started. So if you want correct predictions you have to either take the flat earth model with lots of inelegant hacks, or you use the more elegant round earth model. But these are just models used to make predictions. We know nothing of this supposed "Earth" as it might exist as a thing in itself; this "Earth" is merely an object in our model which we employ to make predictions about sense perception.
The point of the chicken story is that if tomorrow our sense perception hints at the existence of a purple demon who tends to transport people when they reach a certain longitudinal line (if we actually see this happen), then maybe we will have to update our model to the one where the earth is flat and there is a purple demon. The model that was formerly considered to be excessively convoluted is necessary now that we see the purple demon flying around all over the place and transporting people.
Another example: If you wake up in one of those pods shown in the movie "The Matrix," then you will have to revise your model of the world. Waking up in the pod is analogous to the seeing the purple demon doing his transport trick. But until such time when you wake up in the pod (or have other evidence of living in a computer simulation), you can continue to use the simpler model which does not involve living in a computer simulation, because the living-in-the-Matrix model is excessively complicated and inelegant, if it does not explain/predict any phenomena that could not also be explained/predicted by the simpler and more elegant model which does not involve living in a computer simulation. The all-encompassing computer simulation, like the purple demon running round a flat earth, is a redundant, unnecessary, inelegant component of the prediction model - until the day when you wake up in the pod (but that day may never come).
I am glad to see scientists offering also a ore philosophical outlook on the problem of existence. Brilliant! Keep it up
All scientists have philosophical presuppositions. Those who claim they do not, that science is just science, have simply internalized the presuppositions they had received, without analyzing them
"Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on." -Nick Fury
Will the world end?
To paraphrase Thanos:
"It is... inevitable."
As a mathematician, I know for a fact that all axiomatic models produce paradoxes, it was proven previous centuries. Thus all Mathematical models are inherently unreliable and we use them based on faith they are good enough for current applications. I think human logic and reasoning is fundamentally flawed or incomplete, that's why we are incapable of constructing non self contradicting theoretical models.
This presentation was brilliant and concise. Thank you Sabine.
But... she's wrong. According to science (which she should know), in 500 million to 1 billion years from now, life will pretty much be kaput on this planet. And in about 5 billion years, our planet may well be swallowed up by the sun as it becomes a red giant. That's still a lot of time, but it's not a hundred billion years as she stated. Can't believe she made this mistake.
The real point here is that you can either assume the laws of nature will or will not change. If you assume they will not you build shelters, learn where the wildebeest migrate, develop technology, go to the moon and get addicted to smart phones. Your only other option is to suppose the laws of nature will capriciously change at any moment. I'm not sure how taking that approach is going to help you try to make your life better. It's not so much faith, rather the only pragmatic strategy.
Sure all of existence might come crashing down at any given moment. That's why we need to keep learning and striving to do bigger and better things so when that day comes we can either stop it or get out of the way.
Or as Dylan Thomas said "Do not go gentle into that good night"
If it ends, can't stop it or get out of the way because it ended, including us.
@@robertdeland3390 How do you know no one will think something up and find a way?
We are human after all, the word impossible is nothing more than a challenge to many of us...other wise we would not see new attempts at perpetual motion all the time.
@@overlordmagnatronMan's achievements are vastly inferior compared to the complexity of even a single cell organism.
Yes.
I really appreciate your sense of humour
Gotta love some philosophy to spice things up!
Love the new shorter videos! This works way better for me 🥰🥰
I wish that you would have mentioned something about falsifiability and Karl Popper. I have read that most scientists see empirical falsifiability as being a demarcation point between faith & science, in particular, religious beliefs, of which there are practically an infinite number, none of which are testable.
Hyposthese cannot be proven, only falsified. But the purpose of a hypothesis is to propose a statement of a law of nature. That's what science aims at. If science does not aim at that, it is meaningless. So just because hypotheses cannot be proven does not imply science does not involve and depend upon faith in the laws of nature.
Love it! Science, philosophy and a healthy dose of sarcasm - just what I needed.
It's important to remember that science is pointless without the assumption that the laws of nature will remain the same. Imagine trying to play chess if the rules about how the individual pieces can be moved changed without notice.
There is also Laplace's Rule of Succession, a way to calculate the probability that the world is going to end tomorrow (assuming that's a Bernoulli trial).
Lovely. Short and unsettling. Thank you, Sabine.
"Sience is ultimately based on our faith...". Brilliant!
One of the funniest, smartest YTer I've seen
No doubt😊
Spoiler: it will, but we don't have the exact time.
Uh, we do.
@@alexandrugheorghe5610When?
It will end when we damage the ecosystem so much that civilization ends…
It will end when the sun runs out of hydrogen/helium….
It will end when the Big Univeral rip occurs…
And it will essentially end when you die ( from your perspective)…
@@alexandrugheorghe5610...not what "exact" means, Cpt Handraiser.
@@mastpg 22 billion years for the Big Rip
Every counter example always uses a person. You ever notice that? The lady walks by the bakery every day at 8am, the farmer always feeds the chicken, Alice is trustworthy so bob should loan the money etc etc.
It´s all based on turst.
If the world does end, it had better be really good whiskey!
I think faith is not the correct term. While it is true that we cannot prove absolutely that the laws of nature will work tomorrow, each day when we wake up we add another sample to dataset, increasing our statistical confidence that they will. It may not ever be absolute but it tends towards it. This is not faith, it just the most sensible position.
I think a lot of people are going to misunderstand the technicality 'based on faith'. A better way to phrase this is that we can place a lot of confidence in our very high Bayesian priors that the laws of physics will continue.
Bayesian calculations are ultimately subjective
woosh
Uhhhh…. Huh?
Love how all the little worms start wriggling desperately whenever the word faith is mentioned.
Let me say it again, yes, it's most definitely the same thing. Faith is the true postulate present in every mathematical/logical system. Ask daddy Gödel, he knows I'm right.
But a calculation of probability still depends upon the assumption that regularities in the past will continue to hold in the future. And what sense does it make to ask, not, will such and such an event happen, but, will such and such a pattern continue? Do probability calculations have anything to do with the latter?
Thank You! Faith is not a bad action or perception.
Misplaced faith is a bad thing.
Thank you for this! I keep arguing this exact point with people who say "but science doesn't need to belive in anything, you just have to look". But you do have to have faith that nature exists for real and has laws that are unchanging everywhere. To be clear, I do believe in science but from a philosophical point of view I don't think it is any more justifiable than any other belief system.
It's more justifiable because the others (esp. religious ones) are provably false from the get-go, even wrt things that happened in the recent past.
Science, even the one based on the assumption that the laws of nature don't change, produces certifiable and falsifiable data on how the World works, so it's false to put the two in the same category to begin with. Plus, it produce these result if we believe in them being capable of change or not and that is the crucial difference.
@@yeroca You could argue the scientific model was also provably false at many points in history though, how often are we absolutely certain of something only to discover how wrong we were once technology evolved enough to prove it? Just because stories from religious texts can often be debunked as fairy tales, doesn't mean none of the events described in the bible happened.
I've always seen it this way; Religion is built on a foundation of faith, science is a pyramid with faith at the very top..
You can live your whole life learning lessons from reality in the science pyramid and never even realise or question how much faith one has to have to continue living there because there's plenty to observe and it all seems to check out
On the flip side, the religious space is somewhere you almost cannot enter without first abandoning "realism" and accepting it as a faith-based model (which both systems are) from the start cause there really isn't as much to see with your own eyes... Lessons learned there originate in introspection rather than observation and are supposed to be integrated back into reality later, without ever questioning that faith
In both scenarios, questioning that which we cannot know causes the downfall of the belief system. The main difference is in HOW one comes to accept that faith.
Well technically God isn't provably false, since He exists outside of the material world. But of course we Christians can't rely on the argument 'you can't prove God doesn't exist' as a scientific proof. If a stranger tells you that they have experienced a miracle (which would be a discreet and localized breaking of the laws of nature), and your assumption is that 'the laws of nature will continue the way they currently work', then obviously you might think they are lying. Certainly you don't want to believe everything that everyone tells you because across the religions there are contradictory statements. So it becomes easier to assume religion is all lies. However even in the scientific world the issue of 'what is truth' arises because the dominant scientific institutions are not immune to human corruption and oversight. There are a lot of people who love science but who talk about their disappointment with being pushed towards corporate 'for profit only' science versus actually doing something exciting or beneficial. Then there are problems with bloating of poorly done scientific research for the sole purpose of funding grants, established dogma (see SHs critique of particle physics), and the heavy influence of political ideologies or agendas which has caused massive distrust from the public. And just like when church and state was a problem, now the institutions and state are a problem for anyone who opposes the dominant 'scientifically backed' political narrative. And unfortunately a political narrative can be something like 'religion is false, we should abandon it, and science is the only way to find truth'. Even though science is reliable it's not a catch all when it's distorted by politics and the inevitable lies involved in human pursuits of power. This is why many Christians are excited when Jesus says 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life'.
I would argue that science is not based on faith; it is based on reasonable expectations from prior evidence.
But that is missing the point. What do we mean by "reasonable"? Does it mean we have a reason? But what is the reason we believe that regularities in the past will continue to be in effect in the future? Hume explained very clearly that we can give no reason for this. And yet, it does seem "unreasonable" to deny it. But what makes it "unreasonable"? This is something we really can't give a reason for.
@@jeremysmith1585 I think Hume explained that we can give no "proof" for this, unlike proving mathematical theorems. I would hold that extensive observations of physical regularities (leading to what physicists call "laws" that are provisionally accepted) are prior evidence in the Bayesian sense, leading to reasonable expectations. It's not proof, and your expectations can later be shown to not cover all the cases you envisioned, but at least an estimate based on prior evidence can set a probability limit on begin wrong. Faith is not like that.
@@Ken00001010 I've read a little about Bayesian probability, but can you help me with this: what do you mean by "prior evidence in the Bayesian sense"?
@@Ken00001010 And it may be that the problem Hume pointed out is deeper than that. There may be occasions that are not envisioned...such as, the laws of nature changing. Maybe they do change! But how do you calcuate the probability of something like that? But here is the case that Hume really envisioned and Sabine is talking about: what if there are no regularities at all? That there is some regularity that it makes sense to even estimate using probability...that is in fact a matter of faith, which really works no differently from faith in God, or at least the God of the philosophers who is the conscious agent responsible for the laws of nature being in effect. A distinction can be drawn between faith that there is some regularity, and the rational conclusion that if there is some regularity it must be due to a universal conscious agent. So one might have the first faith without drawing the rational conclusion.
Okay I got the video being about us believing the world is not gonna end tomorrow because we put our faith in the laws of nature.
But isn't this a bit of a clickbait to title the video that "Science itself is based on faith"? Science is based on facts and I got sacred for a moment on seeing the UA-cam notification; I thought you're bringing religious faith into science
Scared*
What is the faith that science is based on? It is the faith that the universe is such that events that occur follow patterns that are fixed. But this leads to more questions. If they are fixed, what sort of entities are they? They are not facts in the sense of this or that event. And they are not individual things like atoms or people, which are subject to these laws or patterns. But they do exist somehow. What sort of entity is this which is neither an event nor an individual thing? And how is it that the events always obey these patterns or laws? The only reasonable conclusion is that non-physical universal entities called laws exist, and that they power over those events. But if the laws really are laws, the fact that they continue, and the fact that events follow them, cannot be by accident or brute fact. It is only rational to believe that events follow laws if a mind knows the laws and has power to subject the events to the laws. In other words, the lawfulness of nature is a conclusive argument for the existence of God. And without belief in the existence of God, trust in the laws of the nature, and search for those laws, makes little sense. Perhaps this is the reason that physics is reaching the impasse Sabine talks about.
Science is NOT based on faith, but on experience. The problem of induction is about whether or not scientific belief is about absolute truth. It’s not of practical concern.
Science is great and I am more than thankful for the achievements. spreading lies about the origin of life and the world in order to attack people with faith in God, is not science. It is deception. Nevertheless it is happening constantly, in the name of science. Thankfully, the majority of Earth's population can't be deceived and has faith in God. But it leaves a bad taste. Besides bad consequences.
Hi Sabine. A fan here. I enjoy your vids, especially when they are about physics because your expertise shines. But I agree partially with you. Yes, we can't know if we are a brain in a vat or a computer simulation. But in the end, we have to assume that our senses are somewhat reliable or science will crumble. The solipsistic argument takes you nowhere. If you can't rely on anything then we can't make any progress. And we have a long history of success that we build upon that assumption. And that's evidence that our assumption is working so far. Yes, the farmer can come and chop our heads off tomorrow, but then what's left to care about that you were wrong? So, the assumption that the laws of nature aren't constant takes us nowhere, unless we see evidence otherwise it's a good assumption. It's not faith.
Beware the farmer!
I have faith that your reasoning is correct.
What you said at the beginning: "The world as we know it depends on..." reminded me of a quote I like: "The causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about which depend upon causes we know absolutely nothing about." ~Tom Stoppard 👨🎓
Almost thought she was gonna start discussing "fine tuning" which it seems might be a corollary topic. I'd love to hear her take on that. Sabine?
I think she has said something about it in passing. I think her position is, we'll figure it out eventually... but I might be wrong.
It is a fascinating topic indeed.
@@vmasing1965 Just rewatched a video on "Closer to the Truth" titled "What's the Deep Meaning of Probability?" Sabine touches briefly on "fine tuning" in that. Worth watching in any case, she's mind-blowingly smart.
I usually don't like Sabine's opinions. But, man, she is right about this matter. And it is impressive how people never realised such a basic thing.
Reminds me of the Three Body Problem books. Both the induction problem, and the laws of physics ... suddenly ceasing to work.
As for the question, I would refer to the infinite monkey theorem and answer, "Well duh, the question is when."
Our civilization already obtained weapons of complete annihilation, now it's just a matter of time till the correct people on a correct day end up waking up in a bad mood.
It's perhaps worse than that. There's a non-trivial number of people in AI research who suspect that the competition over who makes AGI first will almost certainly result in a non-aligned AGI that bides its time before killing us all to prevent interference with some instrumental goal it has.
I contend that monkeys are terrible typists, and that they'd never produce any works because they are likely to very poorly produce random characters. Bad monkey! Bad monkey! errr at least non-stochastic monkey!
Every past civilization has ended in one manner or another, ultimately ours will too (I know, this is inductive reasoning, there is a finite, do't know how small, that we will continue until the sun becomes giant). The only questions are when, and if every country in the world is involved at the same time.
In the Three Body Problem books the mutually assured destruction stalemate breaks down when one side assumes that the other is too rational (and/or weak/complacent) to retaliate and attacks anyway. They assume wrong with catastrophic results. Any sign of weakness or backing down can be more dangerous than carrying on the standoff.
I call that "trust" ...not "faith".
Faith is to believe without evidence, like faith in an omnipotent being.
Trust is based on evidence.
The paper published by M.I.T. a few decades ago had several economists look at how long human civilization will continue until the biosphere collapses, and a review of that paper a few months ago (October 2023) shows that the projections in that paper are "right on schedule."
doi?
Having faith is not the same as making assumptions based on observations, and knowing that they are assumptions.
Sabine just broke the universe using whisky.
AND, she spelled it properly, (in the CC's).
Sabine, I wish you explore more about what you mean by faith . C being a constant regardless of frame of observation isn't something you need to take on faith because it can be repeatedly tested and observed. Just because there is no way to empirically prove that C will never change doesn't mean that we have to take it on faith that C is a constant.
Yes, we don't know for sure that the world will continue to exist in the exact current state it does today but we live as if we do because there is no alternative. That's not the same faith as believing in a personal creator and savior who will accept you into heaven for eternal bliss if you just believe. Because there are plenty of alternative to the second kind of faith.
Either the world doesn’t end or I get a bottle of whiskey, life is good ❤
I would argue that "faith" is the wrong word. We might take things like the laws of physics continuing on in the next moment as axiomatic for the sake of discussion, but that's not necessarily an article of "faith". "Faith" is an irrefutable assumption because there's an emotional rationale for "believing". I don't think any good scientist would claim that the laws of physics will continue as an irrefutable assumption. I'm fairly certain there are many physicists believe they won't hold forever (the big rip?).
Science requires properly basic beliefs. God is not a properly basic belief.
Why not? You just have to assume, that the universe is "good" so far. Isn´t that properly, too, since it exists for about 14 billion years already? And it´s not in conflict with science at all.
I disagree in the use of the word "faith" here because this use of "scientific faith," when contrasted with "religious faith" is comparing two unlike things. True, induction isn't a good way to prove things in terms of mathematical rigor, but it's a pretty good way to predict what will happen next given a set of assumptions. Given enough evidence, those predictions end up being right a ridiculous amount of the time.
Religious faith, on the other hand, lacks this predictive power. It's not the same thing at all.
I realize that Ms. Hossenfelder makes this point with her wager at the end, but the ambiguity in the use of "faith" in both scientific and religious domains makes science seem closer to religion than it really is.
I love this channel! It's great to sit and learn! I love that experience! It's like being a kid.... not in school, but when you were learning something you had a real passion for. That kind of feeling!
i think it logical to assume that the laws of nature cannot possibly every change
Faith, in this instance, means confidence. Not that other supernatural nonsense.
no
There's quite a gulf between the assumption that laws will continue to operate as previously observed and 'assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen'. The key thing being observation. Faith can be a very broad term, and for anyone wanting to be precise, best avoided so that concepts using different definitions of 'faith' don't become conflated.
Both wrong (as in: not applicable)
Faith, in this instance is simply a postulate present in any mathematical system (ref: Gödel's theorem).
If we go really specific, those postulates can be vey different for different systems. Lucky to us, Christianity decided Laws of Nature is the Creator's book we humans should read to get to know Him. Unlike in Islam, for example, where they decided Allah is above any laws, including the laws of Nature. Therefore, all he does is pure magic and it's pointless for a human being to even try to understand any of it.
You can see the consequences of those two paths, two cultures, laid out right in front of you...
All you have is just ignorance and thanklessness.
I understand the point but using the term "faith" to describe having any epistemology at all can be very misleading to people who then think that means it is logically consistent for them to believe in supernatural stuff along with science because it's also "faith". It's a confusion between two senses of the word.
Have faith in the laws of 'physics'. Beautifully spoken! ❤
I follow them religiously...
Amen ! 😊 Great video ! A similar video on proving if Mathematics is closed and complete would be very interesting. Keep them coming Sabine !
Science isn't based on faith at all.
If any fundamental principle we take as truth is proven to be wrong, we rejoice. We review our concepts and adopt new paradigms, until something else prove it wrong too.
And that's not faith.
Faith is keeping a believe system in place no matter all facts that prove it wrong.
Faith is having complete confidence in someone or something. Science doesn't prove anything. It relies on induction to make claims. Nothing about science claims is logically certain. Science functions in a pragmatic way but not a discovering truth way. Science relies on the presuppositions that there's an external world (science can't prove or disprove this), that nature is uniform through time and space (science can't prove or disprove this), that events have a cause and effect relationship (science can't prove or disprove), and that there are no supernatural forces that can willfully change the laws of nature at anytime (science can't prove or disprove). All the ASSUMPTIONS are just that, assumptions. We as humans make these assumptions because we have to have a starting point. But that does not mean these presuppositions are true. If I say "If I let go of this apple in my hand, then it will fall due to gravity". This is an example of induction. Science is saying "Every instance of this object (apple) ,or similar objects, being let go from the grip of my hand, it will most likely fall because every time in the past that has happened so therefore we have really good evidence to make the prediction that it will happen in the future. So many people make the mistake (in my opinion) that science is in the business of making objective truth claims. It's in the business to make predictions and to lay out the patterns that we observe in our experiences of life. If I'm wrong about anything please let me know what you think. To sum it all up, science relies on the assumptions that
1. The external world is real
2. That nature is uniform across space and time
3. The past wasn't created 5 minutes ago
4. There are other conscious minds other than my own
5. Every known event has a cause
6. There are no supernatural powers that can intervene with the natural world
These are all assumptions that science makes in order to make sense of our world around us BUT it does not mean it's objective truth just because it works for us
Let me make my argument against what you said
You stated "science isn't based on faith at all"
Please PROVE to me with absolute certainty that the statement is true
Let me provide some reasons why science is a faith based system
Science presupposes the external world is real (Can't be proven true or false by science), science presupposes that natures laws are uniform across time and space (Can't be proven true or false by science), science presupposes that the past wasn't created 5 minutes ago (Can't be proven true or false by science), and science presupposes that events have a cause and effect relationship with each other (Can't be proven true or false by science). All these are ASSUMPTIONS that we claim are true so that science has a foundation to make its conclusions. None of these can't be proved by science, we have FAITH in these assumptions. Science relies on induction which isn't logically certain for its conclusions to match its premises. If I'm wrong, then please provide proof that these aren't assumptions but can't actually be true or false by science. I'm not saying science isn't pragmatic but I don't think anyone can justify science claims with absolute certainty that the claims are truthful. These aren't random statements I'm making up either. Many philosophers and scientists understand the assumptions and presuppositions that science makes because we have to have a foundation for the method and it has to make sense to us.
Just a thing about the Pauli Exclusion Principle. You don't really need it. You just need the probability amplitude from the wave function. It tells you that the amplitude for two fermions being in the same state is zero.
fear of the unknown is really a useless point of focus that we can do without.
It's a survival adaptation. It's one thing to manage the negative effects of fear but if you would be born completely without this reflex, you'd simply ignore the situations that require your full attention and die way sooner than the rest of us.
Don't adapt slogans without thinking it over yourself...
@@vmasing1965 what slogan did I adapt oh wise man? Tell me how wise you are thanks for the psychology lesson thank God I was at a cliffside and almost jumped until I read your amazing break down of evolutionary psychology. Fuck you
Lady I love your comments it puts a smile on My Face I thank You
Is the difference between the way people talk about personal death and a collective end purely due to our genes screaming at us? We all know that our personal world will end, but the thought of everybody else's ending at the same time seems worse to many people.
Everything is faith based in the end.
No no no. That’s not faith, which is the excuse people give when they don’t have evidence for a belief. Science relies on reasonable expectations. Every observation is that the laws are consistent. So we derive a high degree of certainty. Nothing is 100% (faith is). We use statistics to quantify uncertainty. It’s not faith. It’s not blind trust. It is mountains of evidence /observation/ experimentation that lead to a high degree certainty.
There are people who regard Sabine Hossenfelder as an always trustworthy voice of reason. However, professing faith in this way will knock her down a notch in many people's eyes. She has clearly not thought the subject of "faith" through sufficiently. "Faith" (belief without evidence or when faced with contradictory evidence, and held in spite of any seemingly valid argument against it) is the enemy of science. The title alone will inspire contempt in many people.
Humbling. Indeed.
After this I'm going to cancel my reservation at "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe"
I don't really think that technollogical civilizations last more than 200 or 300 years before destroying themselves. That's the solution to the Fermi Paradox.
Sadly, I agree with you. Maybe we’re wrong; but I think it’s more than 50% likely we’re right.
But maybe we won’t all die, we’ll certainly destroy civilization and advanced technology - that’s for sure - but maybe, given the fact there are 8B of us, a remnant of our species will scrape by. Their descendants will be living in caves or in trees.
We’re not going to be sending Captain Kirk out to explore distant galaxies. That’s for sure.
well that's cheered up my New Year no end!
Induction is not purely faith. Mathematical induction proves general validity of an assertion by rigorous reasoning. Non mathematical induction by experience alone is probabistic projection of known experimental data.
Ok, so little green fairies could appear in my front garden after all. I'll leave some milk out for them.
“No one knows when the day or the hour will come”
Yes, however when we talk about faith in the realm of theology and analytical philosophy we are usually talking about the blind faith. Faith with no supporting evidence or scientific theories. I don't know that the sun will rise tomorrow =/= Divine intervention.
Today I learned that when an youtuber says "make sure you're subscribed" its because you sometimes need to make sure youre subscribed. Ive been watching Sabine for several months and discovered today that i wasn't subscribed yet. So make sure you're subscribed.
Interesting new format Sabine
Things will always stay the same. Until they don't.
Without faith, then one has no need to search understanding how the anything is constructed.
Science should never be based on faith, only on empirical test.
A late HAPPY NEW YEAR Sabine, was your new years resolution to post way way more frequently? It's magnificent to see so much of you
I cracked open a cold one just in case you don't keep your promise for the whiskey.
If laws of nature continue to work - that is not a problem. If laws of nature stop to work - that is not our problem anymore.