alt Hacker NewsFrom my personal observation, those whose scientific understanding I admire mostly see little value in what the philosophers have produced. Those who I see admiring the philosophers seldom demonstrate much scientific understanding. Therefore my personal observations do not lead me to the belief that the philosophy helps scientific observation.
You are an illustration. You just argued that one of the most successful scientific theories over the last century should not be considered scientific because it is probabilistic in nature. In so doing you deny all of the evidence for it. Including the theory that allowed us to build the transistors that allow your computer to work.
Evolution these days depends on the theory of population genetics, which is again fundamentally probabilistic in nature. Are you now going to take the position that the theory of evolution is also not scientific?
If so, then your definition of science is so ludicrous that I'm comfortable in dismissing it with derision.
We believe things are probabilistic, but we don't know it is so. To the best of our ability to measure it looks that way. I don't think we can say any more than that.
I am not denying that the transistor is useful and that science does useful things.
I believe a "successful theory" is one that should produce provably good predictions. Quantum computing cannot prove it works yet despite having made promises for a long time.
But you're right, I'm not a scientist, and anyone reading this should know that.
I will change my opinion on quantum stuff when we find it produces unfalsifiable quantum computing results that factor products of large prime numbers (or whatever else they promise to do). But as of right now I believe there is something wrong in quantum computing.