[FoRK] Terms - Practicing Science: Secular vs. Religious Ideology

[Russell Turpin]

sateesh.narahari at gmail.com:
> Yes, if the artifact is found, Jeff should not be in contempt of the
> people who believed that such an archaeological artifact will be 
> found in Jeff's garden. If you leave open a possibility that such an
> archaeological artifact may exist, you shouldn't be in contempt of 
> people who believe such an artifact exists.

When one studies mathematics, homework and test problems often are 
stated as a proposition. Here is an example from point-set topology:

   The product of a normal space and a countably paracompact space
   is countably paracompact. 

The answers "yes" gets zero credit. The answer "no" gets zero credit. 
A partial proof, in either direction, gets some credit. Full credit 
goes only to an actual proof or disproof. 

Someone who tells be that they believe P=NP, despite lacking a proof
of this, gets no respect from me. That doesn't change, if it later 
turns out they were right. Given any binary proposition, one of the 
coins in my pocket will predict it correctly. 

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