• lugal@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    159·
    4 months ago

    Bikes have no windows and can move. There doesn’t seem to be any correlation whatsoever. Fascinating

  • cornshark@lemmy.world
    111·
    4 months ago

    Ducks have wings and can fly. Ostriches have wings and can’t fly. So it’s not the wings that make the ducks fly, it’s something else entirely.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
      21·
      4 months ago

      Perfect example on why the reasoning in the OP is rubbish, even if reaching the right conclusion.

      • BluesF@lemmy.world
        17·
        4 months ago

        An appropriate deduction might be “Cars have windows and can move, houses have windows and cannot move. The presence of windows alone is not what allows the car to move.”

        • Agent641@lemmy.world
          8·
          4 months ago

          Ah, but youre still making unreasonable assumptions that the house can’t move. Perhaps the house just chooses not to move.

          • BluesF@lemmy.world
            5·
            4 months ago

            A fair point - here’s a generalisation. W denotes windows, M the ability to move, a and b are two objects for which their possession of windows and ability to move (or otherwise) is known, and x is some other object.

            (W(a) ^ W(b)) ^ (M(a) ^ ¬M(b)) -> ¬(W(x) -> M(x))

        • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
          6·
          4 months ago

          That works better; the conclusion is practically useless due to the amount of combinations that wouldn’t allow the car to move, but at least it’s reliable.

          Going past that would require messing around with things that don’t move until they do, or vice versa. Also known as science.

            • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
              3·
              4 months ago

              Not quite. Natural philosophy is important for science, but on itself it lacks a key element - testing things.

              (Note that simply trying to deduce how nature works, like the Greek philosophers did, was already natural philosophy. It isn’t science though.)

              • silasmariner@programming.dev
                4·
                4 months ago

                That sounds plausible but is, in fact, kinda a made up distinction you just came up with. People up to and including Isaac Newton used the phrase ‘natural philosophy’ to describe what they were doing. ‘Testing’ in any meaningful sense of the word was a part of that more often than not. Even Pythagorean astronomy was implicitly testing things by making predictions of the movement of celestial bodies. So, no, but thanks.

                Edit: also worthwhile, I feel, mentioning that a lot of good science is purely observational and involves no direct testing, even of theorems. E.g early paleontology would, I feel, fit into that theme

                • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
                  1·
                  4 months ago

                  You’re mincing words to not acknowledge the blatant qualitative difference between what those Greek philosophers were doing under the label “natural philosophy”, versus what people past Bacon (exemplified in your comment by Newton) were doing.

                  And, as a result, your comment boils down to an “ackshyually” leading to a clearly idiotic conclusion.

                  Even Pythagorean astronomy was implicitly testing

                  Emphasis mine. Doing it “implicitly” doesn’t cut it out; this shit needs to be explicit and systematic. You need to take the bloody window off the car and see if it still moves, then take off the lights, so goes on.

                  Even when direct experimentation is not possible due to the nature of the subject, you need to formulate a bunch of alternative explanations and find a way to sort them out. i.e. explicitly test shit.

                  And this is so fucking obvious that I’m not wasting my time further with you. If you’re so blatantly ignorant on the scientific method, Wikipedia is a good start.

  • _NoName_@lemmy.ml
    54·
    4 months ago

    I think it’s kind of hilarious some of the insanely close conclusions some ancient philosophers got to being correct.

    For example, Xenophanes observed that there were fossils of fish and shells, and correctly concluded that Greece was at one point underwater. He also had a bunch of insane claims on top of that, but the underwater part was correct.

    His teacher, Anaximander actually said humans came from fish, which is hilariously close to correct despite the incorrect reasoning.

    Empedocles is probably the most interesting. He concluded that humans and animals originated from these disembodied organs, which found each other and would form wholes. The catch was that many weird forms came about, like people with heads in the center of their bodies, and any other creation you can think of from just slapping animal organs together. He asserted that the forms which were unfit for life died out, leaving only the ones which worked to continue living. Empedocles almost describes a concept adjacent to multicellular organisms forming from single-celled symbiotic relationships (obviously Empedocles didn’t know about bacteria or cell theory), and then goes on to pretty accurately describe the mechanisms of natural selection.

    • kromem@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      4 months ago

      Lucretius in De Rerum Natura in 50 BCE seemed to have a few that were just a bit ahead of everyone else, owed to the Greek philosopher Epicurus.

      Survival of the fittest (book 5):

      "In the beginning, there were many freaks. Earth undertook Experiments - bizarrely put together, weird of look Hermaphrodites, partaking of both sexes, but neither; some Bereft of feet, or orphaned of their hands, and others dumb, Being devoid of mouth; and others yet, with no eyes, blind. Some had their limbs stuck to the body, tightly in a bind, And couldn’t do anything, or move, and so could not evade Harm, or forage for bare necessities. And the Earth made Other kinds of monsters too, but in vain, since with each, Nature frowned upon their growth; they were not able to reach The flowering of adulthood, nor find food on which to feed, Nor be joined in the act of Venus.

      For all creatures need Many different things, we realize, to multiply And to forge out the links of generations: a supply Of food, first, and a means for the engendering seed to flow Throughout the body and out of the lax limbs; and also so The female and the male can mate, a means they can employ In order to impart and to receive their mutual joy.

      Then, many kinds of creatures must have vanished with no trace Because they could not reproduce or hammer out their race. For any beast you look upon that drinks life-giving air, Has either wits, or bravery, or fleetness of foot to spare, Ensuring its survival from its genesis to now."

      Trait inheritance from both parents that could skip generations (book 4):

      “Sometimes children take after their grandparents instead, Or great-grandparents, bringing back the features of the dead. This is since parents carry elemental seeds inside – Many and various, mingled many ways – their bodies hide Seeds that are handed, parent to child, all down the family tree. Venus draws features from these out of her shifting lottery – Bringing back an ancestor’s look or voice or hair. Indeed These characteristics are just as much the result of certain seed As are our faces, limbs and bodies. Females can arise From the paternal seed, just as the male offspring, likewise, Can be created from the mother’s flesh. For to comprise A child requires a doubled seed – from father and from mother. And if the child resembles one more closely than the other, That parent gave the greater share – which you can plainly see Whichever gender – male or female – that the child may be.”

      Objects of different weights will fall at the same rate in a vacuum (book 2):

      “Whatever falls through water or thin air, the rate Of speed at which it falls must be related to its weight, Because the substance of water and the nature of thin air Do not resist all objects equally, but give way faster To heavier objects, overcome, while on the other hand Empty void cannot at any part or time withstand Any object, but it must continually heed Its nature and give way, so all things fall at equal speed, Even though of differing weights, through the still void.”

      Often I see people dismiss the things the Epicureans got right with an appeal to their lack of the scientific method, which has always seemed a bit backwards to me. In hindsight, they nailed so many huge topics that didn’t end up emerging again for millennia that it was surely not mere chance, and the fact that they successfully hit so many nails on the head without the hammer we use today indicates (at least to me) that there’s value to looking closer at their methodology.

      • BenLeMan@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        Wow, Eugene Cernan really should have dedicated that moment to Lucretius instead of Galileo.

  • baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
    49·
    4 months ago

    PLATO: An automobile is craft with an internal combustion engine, crankshaft, and wheels.

    DIOGENES wheels in a HONDA GX630 PRESSURE WASHER

    DIOGENES: Behold! An automobile!

    • philipsdirk@discuss.tchncs.de
      24·
      4 months ago

      These projects are awesome! IIRC they swiveled an entire building whilst still in use somewhere in America (Maybe NYC?). Without interrupting plumbing and electricity.

      Edit: Found it, it was in Indiana: Indiana Bell building

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
    9·
    4 months ago

    Boats often have windows.

    Not always…

    … But, if a boat does have windows, its more likely one can actually live in it as compared to a boat without windows.

    But, some boats with windows cannot really move under their own power, though many can.

    But also many boats without windows can also move.

    But not all of them.

    lol

  • netvor@lemmy.world
    9·
    4 months ago

    You don’t know that houses can’t move. Absence of a proof does not imply impossibility.

    Sounds ridiculous (esp. for windows / houses) but I think it actually shows where Occam’s Razor comes to the rescue: When deciding what to believe, you should consider how many assumptions either model of the world would have to include in order to explain your observations.

    Turns you don’t need to look for indisputable mathematically rigorous proofs, you just need to find the best model.

    • Wogi@lemmy.world
      4·
      4 months ago

      All houses can move, if enough wind is blowing

      Therefore it is wind that makes cars go.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
        2·
        4 months ago

        Sometimes houses move because of wind, sometimes they move because of earth quakes. There’s gotta be a common element, x, between wind and earth quakes that this can be reduced to, so that we can say “cars and houses move because of x”.

  • nexussapphire@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    4 months ago

    Greek algebra, a truth is only true if all other examples of the truth are proven true. Or one can be a part of the whole but the whole isn’t exactly the same as one.

  • angrystego@lemmy.world
    5·
    4 months ago

    House windows and car windows differ a lot both in shape and in materials used. Should they even be called the same just because they can be looked out of? There might still be a chance that the obviously very specialized car windows do make the car go.

    • netvor@lemmy.world
      2·
      4 months ago

      So it’s the window—that is, the open space within the car which has the fuel cap on one side and exhaust pipe on the other—what makes it run.

      Edit: Please don’t try to make house run by pouring gas into one of its window.