> How would you know if those things don't match reality? You can't observe reality independently of these methods (experience, belief, logical conclusion, science, etc.).

We don't do it independently of our experiences. We do it by having new experiences. Our experiences are not truth, they can be inconsistent.

> All premises eventually go back to experiences we can all agree on. Even things as basic as "the world exists", "humans exist", etc. You can't transcend/escape that, even with science.

I think we're in a greement here. The issue is that you said this:

> a (obviously purely hypothetical) person who is 100% perfect at understanding and applying logic could always deduce the truth with perfect accuracy - without testing anything.

That doesn't follow unless you assume that your experiences are always true, and that any logical conclusion drawn from your experience then must be true.

> It is impossible to understand anything (including science) if logic does not work. So we can't really even have a discussion on whether or not logic works, all conversation necessarily assumes that logic works.

I didn't say logic doesn't work. I said that every logical conclusion is based on premises, and those premises are things that people take for granted, not things that are proven true with logic.

> No I don't. Eventually all premises boil down to direct, shared experiences that everyone (or almost everyone) can agree on. So does science. So does everything, really.

Experiences are subjective, even if you and I agree on something that does not mean it is true. And it is absolutely not the same as logically proving that it is true.

Logic can't get you out of the infinite regress. You appeal to a shared experience, which is not a logical argument. And even shared experience can be wrong. We have plenty of evidence that demonstrates how people's perception does not match reality. So how can you claim that a logical conclusion, that has not been shown to match reality is knowledge?

It fundamentally comes down to this: If your belief, or your logical conclusion, or our shared experience does not match reality, then which is correct?

> That means that a (obviously purely hypothetical) person who is 100% perfect at understanding and applying logic could always deduce the truth with perfect accuracy - without testing anything.

This I cannot agree with. First you are assuming an infinite regress of provable premises, which you cannot logically prove to be true. Even the claim that all logical statements are true is not something that is proven, it is assumed to be true because it has not be demonstrated to be wrong.

The fact that even you admit this scenario is impossible is the exact problem. You cannot derive knowledge via an impossible process.

Ok, I think that's a pretty reasonable definition. Working with that definition we could claim, for example, that logical deduction is not science because it doesn't actually test the conclusion as a hypothesis.

Tying this back into the original question, I would say that I would question whether logical deduction without testing against reality actually produces knowledge. A logical conclusion is true only if the premises are true, if we later tested that conclusion against reality we might find that it is false.

> I don't think a definition of "following the scientific method" for "science" is an arbitrary threshold.

> It is a "hard" line, but not all things are spectrums. Not all things that aren't spectrums are "arbitrary". Sometimes (admittedly somewhat rarely), there are just hard binaries.

Well that's something that we can actually explore. What scientific method are we using though? Gathering data and testing hypotheses is very broad. Calculating statistical significance and running double blind experiments is much narrower. Does it need to be written down? Published in a journal? Does science done before the invention of statistics count as science?

If there is a hard line, then where is it?

> You're still basically just re-definining "science" into "good way of gaining knowledge". Saying a method is "more scientific" is then just a way of saying "better".

I actually differentiated science vs knowledge. Science is a process, knowledge is a potential result. I am not defining all good ways of gaining knowledge as scientific, I am claiming that science includes all the component steps of the process. You can't do science without deductive reasoning, so either we claim deductive reasoning is scientific, or we claim it is necessary but insufficient.

So why would I go with a more permissive definition? Because the alternative requires some arbitrary threshold, a point at which logic and observation and pattern recognition switches from "not science" to "science". I do not believe that threshold is well defined, science has been performed in many different ways across different fields and across history. For example, plenty of science was done before the invention of statistics or double blind trials. defining science as a scale is a way to acknowledge that there isn't any threshold point, and yet still have a way to describe things as more scientific, less scientific, or unscientific.

So I didn't invent this definition to win an argument, but to better reflect how I do not view science as a binary concept. It is far too broad a term, encompassing too many factors to be so simplistically divided.

It's not meaningless, it's a gradient, not binary. Some methods of acquiring knowledge are more or less scientific, and of course some things are completely unscientific.

To simplify, we might imagine a scale from 0% science to 100% science, and different forms of learning or belief fall at different points on the scale. From that viewpoint scientism is the claim that knowledge perfectly correlates with that scale, and anti-scientism is the idea that there are forms of learning which are low, maybe even 0 on the science scale, yet high in knowledge.

I see it as more of a gradient. There isn't a clear delineation between "doing science" and "not doing science." But when we do science we use all of those methods.

Let's say I make a logical deduction, which you claim is not science. But my conclusion becomes a hypothesis. Then, throughout my life I have experiences related to my hypothesis, and I recognize patterns in my experiences. Then I compare the patterns in my experience to my original logical conclusion. That's science.

Those are all things that science also does, so I guess I don't see them as being separate.

What are the other methods?

We certainly can't run controlled experiments on everything in our lives. But I think that even with the limitations of reality, our best ways to gain knowledge will resemble science, only with some looser restrictions out of necessity.

That paper's finding still appears to confirm the original Bell experiment though. So that's still evidence against that position.

There's always the potential for other models, but you argue as you expect further research to overturn these interpretations.

New models will inevitably come up, but that doesn't mean they will be deterministic. A deterministic model has a higher burden of evidence because it would still have to explain these experiments.

It's just an explanation of the experiment, it's not like it was his research. Do you have an actual criticism of the experiment or my interpretation of it?

Just to be clear, there are experiments that show that quantum entanglement is not the result of a hidden variable. See this video for how those experiments work.

So there is evidence against hidden variables. And you are essentially arguing that this evidence is wrong or misinterpreted. The only deterministic interpretation of this is that entangled particles have faster than light communication, which as far as I know, does not have evidence supporting it.

Those are just subjective statements. you don't even need logic or facts, at the end of the day you can feel one way and other people can feel differently, and neither will be right or wrong.