Из
http://sandegud.livejournal.com/257064.html "Древнейшее описание научного эксперимента" цитируют Юдковского "Rationality: From AI to Zombies":
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The earliest account I know of a scientific experiment is, ironically, the story of Elijah and the priests of Baal.
The people of Israel are wavering between Jehovah and Baal, so Elijah announces that he will conduct an experiment to settle it - quite a novel concept in those days! The priests of Baal will place their bull on an altar, and Elijah will place Jehovah's bull on an altar, but neither will be allowed to start the fire; whichever God is real will call down fire on His sacrifice. The priests of Baal serve as control group for Elijah - the same wooden fuel, the same bull, and the same priests making invocations, but to a false god. Then Elijah pours water on his altar - ruining the experimental symmetry, but this was back in the early days - to signify deliberate acceptance of the burden of proof, like needing a 0.05 significance level. The fire comes down on Elijah's altar, which is the experimental observation. The watching people of Israel shout "The Lord is God!" - peer review.
And then the people haul the 450 priests of Baal down to the river Kishon and slit their throats. This is stern, but necessary. You must firmly discard the falsified hypothesis, and do so swiftly, before it can generate excuses to protect itself. If the priests of Baal are allowed to survive, they will start babbling about how religion is a separate magisterium which can be neither proven nor disproven.
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На самом примере, конечно, пример гигантского лохоразвода под видом "научности", с далеко идущими последствиями. Типа нынешнего глобалворминга. Я нынче повадился в телевизоре смотреть фокусы, "Fool Us" с Пенном и Теллером, так мне первым делом приходит в голову, что это "поливание водой" было не случайным, а как раз и зажгло огонь. Вот такие экспериментальные наблюдения. Вообще рассуждения о логике - это такой классический способ разводить лохов, которые не замечают встроенных в логику ошибок и заманух.