Smallest Of All Possible Belief Systems

The talk about using a tautology as a "belief system" below demonstrates that this page needs a definition.

Should it in fact be moved to WhyClublet when we move ReligiousWar, as we've been threatening in a peaceful kind of way to do since the original move of pages? (I originally created this page in 2000 as a result of a comment in ReligiousWar, as explained below.) -- RichardDrake

Richard: I this page is general, not religious - but inquisitive, including not only theological but also scientific and philosophical. It could also be extended to include programming philosophy, extreme programming, and patterns.

Depends on your beliefs :)

 I am god - move it at your whim.
 Nihilism - delete it.
 Science - experiement with it.
 Abelief - do nothing.
 Do what works - do what you normally do.

"Science" and "Do what works" seem to be general principles, that need more concrete sub-principles and patterns to be useful. Candidate sub-principles are:

1. On wiki, the further the topic of a page is away from software and patterns, the more authoratative (quoting published sources), summarized, unemotional, and reference-y the page should be.

Using this principle, summarize this page in about five lines, and point to a rambling discussion on Why.

Then, if we are industrious, we can do some research to find the original/top level belief systems "behind" verious software languages, software methodologies, and the pattern movement.

For example, from "Introduction to Programming Languages", at http://burks.bton.ac.uk/burks/pcinfo/progdocs/plbook/index.htm

This text is built around the observation that programming languages are based on three fundamental concepts:

 Abstraction and generalization 
 Data and data structuring 
 Computational models

Theory is approached intuitively and motivated with prototypical examples. Three approaches

 Mathematical: work from fundamental principles to practice 
 Scientific: collect data, construct theories 
 Popular culture: survey

It is the purpose of this text to explain the concepts underlying programming languages and to examine the major language paradigms that use these concepts.

Describe SmallestOfAllPossibleBeliefSystems here.

Yes, please do.

The SmallestOfAllPossibleBeliefSystems is Solipsism: "I am God". Those three words pretty sum up all there is to say to it.

Very fair. But I was hoping for light to be shed on the claim that science is the smallest of all possible belief systems, made in ReligiousWar.

Nihilism is very small too. I see no point in saying anything about it.

I wonder whether the SmallestOfAllPossibleBeliefSystems is the most objective of belief systems, or the most subjective of belief systems?

What do you mean with "objective"? If you mean "its truth can be objectively verified", then it is not a belief system, but a scientific theory.

A scientific theory is a BeliefSystem?; just one with particular properties like verifiability.

Then I nominate a tautology, e.g.: "If A, then A", or "A or not A", to be the most objective belief system.

Presumably, implicit in the title is something like "covering everything we care about". So a particular scientific theory would be a "partial belief system" or something; I suppose the claim this page was originally discussing could be tightened up to yield something like "The minimal belief system covering everything we care about is scientific in the sense that it apportions no more belief to anything than is warranted by the empirical evidence". Of course, this is still hopelessly sloppy because "everything we care about" isn't defined. I suspect that saying "science is the smallest of all possible belief systems" amounts (at least partly) to declaring a lack of interest in a whole bunch of common human concerns. :-)

Smallest of all possible belief systems = { 0 ) zero - No belief - Abelief

do what works