> How do I know an apple will fall to the floor when I drop it?

You need a model with predictive power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_power

>> The concept of predictive power, the power of a scientific theory to generate testable(!) predictions, differs from explanatory power and descriptive power (where phenomena that are already known are retrospectively explained or described by a given theory) in that it allows a prospective test of theoretical understanding.

>> A classic example of the predictive power of a theory is the discovery of Neptune as a result of predictions made by mathematicians John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier, based on Newton's theory of gravity.

>> If a theory has no predictive power, it cannot be used for applications.

Considering this, does:

>>> "A MAGA hat is just another way of saying "Mexicans are rapists"

...have predictive power? A useful technique I use to measure the intelligence of a theory is to implement it in the form of a boolean function. Try it out with that statement, just for fun, and see if your opinion on it changes at all.

Or, before we get ahead of ourselves...what does that sentence actually mean? It's purpose and origin are rather obvious (at least to me), but I'm interested in its literal meaning. Since the original author seems to have lost interest in the discussion (despite the prior "Fitting there's no actual RESPONSE..." complaint), perhaps you can decipher the literal meaning for me?

> Surely, I don't need to understand the infinitely complex workings of the entire universe to form a confident conclusion.

You need to understand the complex workings of whatever system you are working with well enough to produce testable predictions. If you do not have that, then you should not be forming confident conclusions. Very often, "it is not known" is the correct answer, and it wasn't all that long ago that most technical people could manage that stance. But as they say, time marches on.

> That's not how any decisions regarding our "global human society" is made.

You are absolutely correct - and observe the result: a scary number of people who work largely in pure logic all day long, are no longer able to differentiate between actual facts and heuristic predictions their subconscious spits out, at least on certain topics. A large percentage of the population is no longer capable of applying logic across diverse domains in a mentally disciplined manner, and they are also unable (and unwilling) to realize this. How did this happen seems like a good question.

> Even science (we can debate (and epistemologists do) whether this is truly the case or not; there is no complete theory of knowledge) does not present itself as having absolute facts

Science itself doesn't present itself as having absolute facts, but people who believe they are followers of science, or scientific thinkers, regularly speak as if science does have absolute facts, including here on HN on certain topics (generally, anything culture war related).

> but I think we can mostly agree that scientific knowledge has a more accurate representation of of the correlation between "chem trails" and the sexual orientation of frogs that Alex Jones does

Bravo.