this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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I'm sure you are an excellent chemist, and a successful scholarly author, but 100% fact is not attainable. 99.999%? Sure. But there's always a fraction of a percent chance that you're in a simulation, or hallucinating, or that some hyper-advanced entity is playing an elaborate trick on you. All vanishingly small, infinitesimal even, but non-zero.
100% certainty is incompatible with science.
It is.
Sorry to burst your bubble but science is just an explanation for our reality as we perceive it. It does not matter if we are in a simulation, or collectively hallucinating. In our perceived reality evolution is 100% fact. Gravity is 100% fact. Carbon having 6 protons is 100% fact. 2+2 = 4 is 100% fact. Hydrogen reacting with oxygen at high temperature to form water is 100% fact.
Dude, there are absolute facts in science, many of them.
2+2 = 4 is 100% fact because it's just mathematics, purely conceptual, and defined as such. Math isn't science. Carbon having 6 protons is a 100% fact because that's the definition of carbon, so if it doesn't have 6 protons we don't call it carbon. Definitions, even definitions used in science, are not themselves science. Those are human concepts, you can certainly have 100% certainty with man-made concepts.
Reality itself is not a purely human concept, we did not invent it. Extremely likely theories to explain reality with mountains of consistent evidence are the closest we can get to 100% certainty. I'd bet my life on an extremely likely theory with mountains of consistent evidence, but it is still technically a bet.
Consult your peers, see what they think about claiming 100% certainty. This conversation is going nowhere. I'm sorry for your mindset, and I hope it doesn't affect your work.
Every scientist I know and have ever met accepts there are 100% facts within science, including evolution and gravity among others.
Because as I said, science is a tool to explain our perceived reality, and things can absolutely rise to the level of fact. It does not matter if our reality turns out to be a computer simulation, because within that reality there are established facts that are true to said reality.
Evolution and gravity are both facts and theories, but they are still 100% facts in our current reality.