[davisoneee]

Nothing is _ever_ certain or completely specified in science (or elsewhere)... and society is going to move forward, so what level of 'evidence' is sufficient for you? This is going to come across as antagonistic, but...what's the alternative? "The argument that science should be trusted is insane..." ... so are we expected to twiddle our thumbs and do nothing for the rest of time?

I'm assuming you trust at some point? Have you ever flown? We have theory, we have evidence, and a high level of _justified true belief_ (to refer to recent HN posts) for how flight works, but perhaps all _these_ replications are just fortuitous and 'fake'? We 'trust' Newtonian physics enough for society to _act_ and _progress_ ... and then we quantum comes along.

[Dalewyn]

>so what level of 'evidence' is sufficient for you?

Enough evidence such that no evidence to the contrary can stand.

We agree that liquid water is wet because we can't find anything (yet) that says liquid water is not wet, it's simple as that and science is ultimately as simple as that.

>Have you ever flown?

Yup, I'm a frequent flyer actually and fly more or less every month or two for business (and pleasure once the business is done, but that part's a secret).

[zehaeva]

>We agree that liquid water is wet because we can't find anything (yet) that says liquid water is not wet, it's simple as that and science is ultimately as simple as that.

I find this a weird example of something that has "Enough evidence such that no evidence to the contrary can stand."

"Water is wet" is a definition, not a scientific finding/description. "Water tends to adhere to, and penetrate, materials." That's sort of a scientific finding. "We call this condition wet" isn't so much.

Science, by Popper's definition, is something that can be falsified but has not yet been so. If no evidence could contradict our current findings then, by definition, our current findings are not falsifiable.

I realize that I'm quibbling about definitions, I guess I just want to point out that your level of evidence is dangerously close to being a self reinforcing tautology. Similar to how any religion justifies itself.

[Dalewyn]

The specific example isn't important.

The point is that our agreement is merely the result of there being no other conclusion as far as we are aware, and to expand our awareness we must be skeptical of our conclusions in perpetuity.

This is why trusting science is insane, because if you trust something you stop questioning it and if you stop questioning then you never know if it's true or false.

>Science, by Popper's definition, is something that can be falsified but has not yet been so. If no evidence could contradict our current findings then, by definition, our current findings are not falsifiable.

I'm going to ignore that you just defined "current findings" as not science, since I presume that wasn't what you intended.