Re: What is a software engineer?

RobG wrote:
On Nov 15, 11:07 pm, The Natural Philosopher <t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
RobG wrote:
Empirical evidence is used to develop and support a theory, however
the theory itself must have a scientific basis - that is, it must have
a rational explanation that will predict behaviour in similar
circumstances. Simply observing that something happens is just an
observation of a fact, an experiment. Being able to repeat an
experiment and achieve the same outcome every time doesn't prove
anything other than that the experiment is repeatable, it doesn't
provide any explanation of why the experiment "works", nor predict the
likely outcome if the parameters are changed, nor provide any bounds
within which it "works" or "fails".
However most of science is, in the *final* analysis, precisely what you
describe.

No, it isn't. Science attempts to understand and explain the
underlying system that causes outcomes.

Nope. Not in the final analysis.

Its just a set of consistent hypotheses that hang together and haven't been shown to be wrong, yet. Based on the assumption that the behaviour of the world is governed by casuality, and laws. Both of these are human inventions.



It is also open to new
theories that better explain outcomes, it doesn't blindly accept that
because something "always happens" that it will continue to happen.


Never said it did. Howver the only thing science is successful at, and its only use is in predicting the future, even if its where the sun will rise tomorrow.

That the experimental results are in accord with its predictions, is its sole claim to any validity whatoever.

As to whether this is indicative of some correlation between its theoretical concepts and reality at some level, opinions are divided, from those who claim it gives 'strong evidence' that reality is in fact like science says it is, to those (myself among them) who claim it says nothing at all about the real nature of reality, Its only a means of foretelling how that will behave.



a set of propositions that may (or may not!) reflect an underlying
reality, whose predictions have failed to ever be falsified by
experiment, and whose propositions CAN in principle be falsified.

And which actually add some value that competing theories do not.

It is by disproof that new theories emerge or existing ones are
strengthened. You can't disprove a theory by contrary experimentation
alone, you have to propose a theory as to *why* the evidence is
contradictory.

No, simply showing that there is not a green unicorn at the bottom of my garden right now, is sufficient to refute the proposition that there is. No competing theory is required.




The contrary evidence may simply provide a boundary for
where the theory holds and where it doesn't. Quantum theory is the
antithesis of relativity, but doesn't disprove it.


I dont think that it actually is.

Kepler's laws of planetary motion were fine until instruments were
accurate enough to discover the errors, but then the hunt was on for a
better theory. Without Einstein's theory of relativity, modern GPS
systems would be impossible. Without Hawking's theories we'd never
have found black holes, even though they were predicted by Einstein's
theories.


So what? the models get better and more accurate. They are still models though. The map is not the territory.


Cf Kuhn, Popper, Instrumentalism, et al.

There's a big difference between instrumentalism and scientific
experimentation. Experiments and their results are a fundamental part
of developing theories, it is the people that I call tradesmen that
are instrumentalists.


I dont think you know what instrumentalism is.


Without the explanation, there is no theory. There is no application
of scientific knowledge, no understanding of why the result occurs. It
is no more than faith - it's always worked before in their limited
experience, therefore they expect it to always work. Anyone who
performs work using such methods should be categorised as a trades
person. They are certainly not professionals applying scientific
theories or methods. They are not engineers.
:-) sadly, there are no final explanations for anything.

I think you're being deliberately disingenuous. Science is constantly
evaluating new theories and updating old ones, even tossing them out.
There is no expectation that a theory will last forever, nor that any
theory is "final".

so how can it be a 'true' picture of anything?



will the sun rise tomorrow? Can't say really.

Then you should learn the physics of solar motion. There are theories
that predict when the sun won't rise tomorrow - it's a few billion
years away, but it's been predicted for quite some time.


Until such time as it doesn't rise, and we need a new theory ;-)

It always HAS...whether
that's because it obeys certain immutable laws of physics that we
BELIEVE to be universal true (nay DEFINE to be universally true) or
whether its because the Ngongobongo tribe absolutely do a special tribal
dance every sunset to make sure it does, is a very moot point.

You don't seem to know much about science - there is no such thing as
an immutable law of physics.

All laws of physics are by definition held to be immutable. WE may have to change our descriptions, but we don't really deal with a law that works today and doesn't work in the same way tomorrow.


Newton's laws were good enough for the
time in which they were proposed, however we now know much more than
we did in the 1600s. Einstein's laws were pretty good too, but they
have their limits also - he never did find his unifying theory,
perhaps there isn't one. But that wont stop people trying to find it.


I think you had better study the history and philosophy of science a bit more. Otherwise you are in danger of confusing science with something else.




Oh, and an explanation is not a theory, and certainly not a scientific
theory, nor is a scientific theory an explanation.

Now you've lost it.


No, you have. About 3 paragraphs back.

It is if you like,
the expression of the result of a lot of experimental data in terms of
an algorithm.

More or less. And that algorithm is the explanation.


Algorithms don't explain anything. Algorithms calculate results. You can sum an infinite series and get a sine wave, but it doesn't explain it. Merely shows how to define where its going to be.

Science merely avoids the question of a final explanation by pushing its causal models further and further back till it gets to something like a big bang, at which point all bets are off, because nothing can cause a big bang. In fasct, nothing *did* cause a big bang. ;-)

WE merely can say that if we extrapolate the timelines of all the stuff we can observe, backwards, they meet at aq given place and time.



In the same way that the reality of our perceptions is a
compressed representation of all the salient features of all the data we
are subjected to.

That isn't a scientific theory

I didnt say it was., I was merely pointing out the fact that the reality of or perceptions is ALSO a mdoel of reality, not reality itself.

Our perceptions are already algorithmically compressed before we cogitate upon them, and create yet more compression using the axes of space, time and causality that we have used to form them in the first place.


- you're back to simple observed
results.


Observeed reults are anything but simple, unless you are a rational materialist, in which case I wont argue with your faith.


E=mc^2 is a shorthand algorithm for calculating mass-energy
relationships. That is borne out by observation. I am not sure it
explains anything at all. Not in any fundamental way. Its just the
expression of a constancy of relationship between certain elements of a
world we have defined in certain precise terms.

I think this is some kind of straw man argument. You put up a famous
equation and say "that's not a theory",

NO., I said it wasn't an *explanation.*, It is however, a theory (or teh emathematical repersentation of one). Jolly neat one in fact. Ties up a lot of loose ends.

well, it isn't, and I didn't
say it was. That equation is part of a theory - Einstein's theory of
special relativity, which built on work by many others incuding
Galileo.

Did you actually think I didn't know that?

I am trying to draw a fine, but very important line between theories, and explanations.

The pope does explanations. Science does theories. But you don't seem to know what a theory actually is.

I've pionted you at things like Popper, Kuhn, and Instrumentalism, which is about where the debate is right now, and its not just academic willy waving. Its actually very important, especially if you are doing primary research. Or getting into arguments with creationsists. Science is not a religion, And yet it too is ultimately based not perhaps on Faith, but certainly on some a priori assumptions, which are essentially metaphysical. Namely that the world is really there, and its more or less as we observe it to be (or at least that's a fair but limited aspect of it), and for the purposes of doing science, its actually held to be a casual matrix of events that cause other events, governed by immutable laws that do not change from place to place or day to day. That's what science assumes for the purposes of its practice.

None of those are demonstrably true statements. And if you discount a spiritual dimension, free will is a myth as so defined by those assumptions, as well. WE are simply puppets playing out the causes.

But I am not here to argue for or against that: I merely note the difficulty of free agents describing an unfree world, of which they hold themselves to be a complete part. It is an intrinsic paradox, which shows that the description is delightfully incomplete, and can never represent reality accurately by that fact.

Quantum physicist need to understands all that or they will end up with their knickers in a twist. Almost anyone who probes the depths of knowledge looking for a solid foundation, comes up against this basic recursion problem. Godel, Heisenberg..everywhere you look the ultimate fact is there are no ultimate facts. Which leasd to another philosophical movement called Relativism.


'Because God wills it' is the ultimately irrefutable explanation for
everything.

Rubbish. It is refuted quite simply - where is the proof of this god?

No proof of his existence is required . I merely posited it as in irrefutable statement. I am playing devils advocate here of course. I have no Faith.

No proof is required of the validity of any scientific theory. Again I direct you to Karl Popper. No scientific theory ever has ore ever will be, proven. Science don't work like that. At best it posits useful theories that can potentially be disporioven BUT NEVER HAVE BEEN, YET.

If rational explanation exists, then clearly there is no need for a
god and hence no evidence for its existence.


But no rational explanation does exist for anything, which is why people who like certainty, invent God to paper over the cracks. As if giving the huge unknowns as to WTF is going on, and why, a name, actually helped any.

That doesn't make it a scientific theory in any sense.

More straw men - no one said it was, it's faith.

Oh, a LOT of creationists would argue that it is precisily on a par with science, believe me :-) Thst why you need your ducks in a row. The right ducks.

Science does not
state categorically that one or more gods can't or don't exist, it
just says that there is no proof of a god. Read a bit of Richard
Dawkins' work, specifically "The God Delusion".


I have. Philosophically its embarrassing. He's really crap. There are some devastating arguments, but not his. In fact he damages the cause of science massively, because there is no scientific proof of anything else, either. That is not what makes science superior. What makes it superior, is that it predicts the future. Faith does not.




A professional engineer is one who makes his living out of designing
engines. HOW he does it, is really no part of what he is.

That is an utterly superficial excuse for logic. It's all about how
the work is done that matters, that's the whole point of this thread.


And I am pointing out taht engineering is not about how things work, its about making things work. The how of it is just a step along the way, and not even necessary to achieve a functional mechanism.

After all, yoiu almost certainly don't know how a semiconductor *works* even if you know how it *behaves*. But you don't even need to know that to write code.


I probably know a bit more than you do, but I wouldn't claim to know HOW it finally works. Its a quantum effect device really. But that doesn't explain it. It just passes the msytery down to the quantum boys.

Professional is no guarantee of quality.

Of course not, and I didn't I say that. Quality is a whole new topic -
as if this hasn't gone far enough off topic already.


No it has not gone off topic.

The question is what is a software engineer? well he's a sort of engineer., and so the question is what is an engineer?, and my answer is that he is someone who constructs effective machines in the broadest sense, you or someone cried out that he was a scientist applying science, and I attempted to refute that, and that's how we got here. In order to understand whether or not an engineer is applying science, and that's *all* he does, we have to understand what science is. Here we find that you don't actually have the answer as defined by what are the accepted norms, from those who make the business of precise definitions their life's work, and you are not aware of the debates surrounding the finer parts of that definition. I have tried to make you aware of them, that's all.

Dont read Dawkin, Read Popper, if you want the real difference between science and religion. Dawkin is, pardon me, a bit of a Dawk.

A quick browse through a potted precis of Kant wouldn't be amiss either:

Ultimately an engineer is a caveman who, with no science at all, ties a stone on the end of a stick, and bashes idiots who are still looking for Explanations as to *why* it works, over the head, and eases their troubled minds that way. He doesn't know *why* it works, he merely notes that it *does*, and that the bigger the stone and the longer the stick, the more dead the Dawks are when he's finished hitting them. No more is needful for the purpose of commiting useful assault and battery.

Simples!!


Of course it wont get a rocket to the moon, but it's a start, and it does mean if he is feeling generous, he can kill enough woolly mammoths to feed the woolly minds that will one day dream up a Theory that may be tested at Cape Canaveral.

You should note that this is why computer *scientists* are such an infernal waste of space. They want to know how it all works. Software engineers don't need to know how it works. Just how to *make* it work. They may well also pick up some knowledge of how it works, but its only an adjunct to the main purpose of their craft. Not its purpose.



ob
.

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