Metaversal Mining

I’ve put forward the proposition that different Kuhnian scientific paradigms have associated with them different modes of argument (Newtonian-causal, Einsteinian-relativistic, Quantum/complex-probabilistic). This shouldn’t be a big surprise and is almost a definition for a paradigm shift in itself.

What I would like to suggest is that in order to perform an argument for or against a specific piece of science the rhetorical tools that you employ must be of at least the same level as the science itself. So you cannot employ causal arguments in a debate about the aerodynamics of Formula One racing cars and hope to win, but you could employ causal arguments of momentum transfer when discussing the science of playing snooker. Likewise the basic chemistry of cooking has no use for relativistic rhetoric, but the evaluation of emotional response only really has meaning in relative terms. You could not hope to argue successfully that a weather system will or will not respond to your building of a new house in simple black and white terms, but you may be successful if you provide a probability factor that you will induce a rain shadow on your new garden by raising the roof-line by a meter.

So if we take this thesis one step further we have a ready made quality of debate-o-meter. All we need to do is look at the paradigmic position of the arguers with respect to the subject matter of the argument to give a gross overview of whether one or other will be able to defend his position. Those who use the correct tools for the subject being more likely to win the argument because the opponent has not understood that in order to argue a scientific position you must first understand where that position fits in the schema of scientific paradigms.

At this point I should just state that we can definitely use a scale of increasing effectiveness (causal-relativistic-probabilistic) because scientific discovery is cumulative and even scientific dead ends like phlogiston taught scientific method by error.

So next time you read or have a real debate about a subject that has science at its heart look at the paradigm that your argument belongs to against the paradigm that the science belongs to.

Thats it. A simple one today.
Fit the argument to the paradigm and you will have more success.
and
Later paradigms are more likely to win than early paradigms.

However this has an potentially vast implication regarding scientific communication, the use of experts, the role of education in democracies, all sorts of things. We may get to those eventually.