[HN Gopher] Weird Science
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Weird Science
Author : Petiver
Score : 45 points
Date : 2022-03-18 03:45 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lareviewofbooks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lareviewofbooks.org)
| hhs wrote:
| > "Likewise, fringe movements in the sciences have long been a
| part of American society, although, to be sure, there has been a
| decided uptick over the past few decades. Consider the Flat Earth
| theory. Despite what you may have heard, Christopher Columbus did
| not discover that Earth was round; this fact was known since
| antiquity. (Plato wrote about it.) The notion that Columbus, one
| of the few knowledgeable mariners who did not quite believe it
| was a sphere (he thought it was egg-shaped), "discovered" its
| shape was a creation of the writer Washington Irving, who sought
| to assign some scientific legitimacy to what was otherwise a
| colonialist land grab. [5] Yet in the past decade, Flat Earth
| theory has achieved a certain currency, fueled by YouTube videos
| and an appetite for contrarian thinking, hyperskepticism, and a
| yearning for community. [6]"
|
| That last sentence suggests intrinsic motivation. Sometimes there
| may also be a business motivation (e.g., economics of the
| infotainment industry).
| apocalypstyx wrote:
| The question might be whether intrinsic motivation is
| inescapable.
|
| "From the start of this book I have had occasion, in various
| contexts, to refer to the overwhelming elation felt by
| scientists at the moment of discovery, an elation of a kind
| which only a scientist can feel and which science alone can
| evoke in him. In the very first chapter I quoted the famous
| passage in which Kepler announced the discovery of his Third
| Law: '...nothing holds me; I will indulge my sacred fury...'1
| The outbreak of such emotions in the course of discovery is
| well known, but they are not thought to affect the outcome of
| discovery. Science is regarded as objectively established in
| spite of its passionate origins. It should be clear by this
| time that I dissent from that belief; and I have now come to
| the point at which I want to deal explicitly with passions in
| science. I want to show that scientific passions are no mere
| psychological by-product, but have a logical function which
| contributes an indispensable element to science. They respond
| to an essential quality in a scientific statement and may
| accordingly be said to be right or wrong, depending on whether
| we acknowledge or deny the presence of that quality in it."
|
| --- Michael Polanyi
|
| --- Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy,
| p140
| beloch wrote:
| The thing about flat-earther youtube videos is that they aren't
| all designed to be seen by other flat-earthers. Some feature
| utterly idiotic arguments presented in a deliberately smug and
| arrogant manner designed to infuriate the viewer.
|
| People share things they like and agree with, but they also
| share things that piss them off and make them mad.
| carapace wrote:
| I read the whole thing and although there was a lot of
| interesting information there, I don't get what the author was
| trying to say (other than, "Hey look at all this information.")
|
| To me it seems clear that the word "science" and the outer
| trappings and forms of using the Scientific Method have become
| co-opted, largely in the last century or so, to cover a lot of
| things that just can't be considered "true science". This is not
| a "No True Scotsman" instance, because there is a clear and
| incontrovertible guideline for what (I think) counts as "true"
| science: the ability to make accurate predictions. That, and that
| alone, is what truly distinguishes _science_ (as I am using the
| term here, in a restricted sense) from all the other what-could-
| be-called "predictive arts": e.g. astrology, tarot & divination,
| numerology, etc.
|
| Obviously, _physics_ counts as "true" science. The standard
| model makes predictions accurate to within a mind-bending
| tolerance, the width of a human hair over the distance from New
| York to Los Angeles. Chemistry is science, biochemistry and
| molecular biology are still science. Biology and ecology are
| pretty scientific. From there, things get much worse pretty
| quickly.
|
| By the standard of "ability to make accurate predictions" there
| are a lot of things we call "science" today that I just don't
| think deserve the title, most importantly: economics, sociology,
| and psychology. They can't make predictions, and in many cases
| they can't even replicate their "findings" from previous
| "research"!
|
| I think those "sciences" serve a social function, the same one
| that the court astrologers et. al. used to serve, they give a
| glamour of legitimacy to the king and a way to deflect
| responsibility onto councilors of the imaginary, who supply
| ready-made scapegoats.
|
| I'm not saying "the humanities are not useful" or anything like
| that, what I'm saying is that people mix up the orders of
| knowledge (deliberately or otherwise) as part of politics, and
| that some things that we call "science" today, aren't. I mean,
| E=mc2 doesn't have to "defend itself" politically. Anyone
| anywhere can test it for themselves (that's the whole point,
| innit!?)
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| > _Obviously, physics counts as "true" science._
|
| I am not a scientist, but I worked as a R&D engineer and it's
| my understanding that in a lot of physic fields there is a need
| for empiric corrections.
|
| It may be the case of semiconductors design if I recall
| correctly, but it happens also in other fields. Maybe GPS
| anomalies is a good example:
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/~gracegao/publications/conference/H...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity#Anomalies_and_discrepa...
| morelisp wrote:
| A better definition of science, particularly in trying to
| separate proto-science or difficult science from non-science or
| pseudo-science, is in terms of open vs. closed systems.
|
| Sociology and psychology do make predictions, but do not have
| good accuracy and experiments are often prohibitively expensive
| or difficult to run[0]. Nonetheless, they seek to refine them
| based on new findings and new methods, and I think it's
| uncontroversial that psychology today has a body of knowledge
| it can make predictions about better than 50 years ago, at
| which point it had a body larger and more clearly defined than
| 100 years ago, etc.. This is not true of numerology, tarot,
| etc., as well as less controversial non-sciences like painting
| or rhetoric. It also helps tease out the scientific vs. non-
| scientific (without value judgement) parts of e.g. economics,
| and the scientific vs. non-scientific parts of physics.
|
| Focusing the definition on outcomes rather than methods repeats
| the same original sin of scientism you're criticizing. (Plus it
| means a particularly lucky coin could safely be 'science'.)
|
| [0] Also true of large areas of modern physics.
| carapace wrote:
| > A better definition of science, particularly in trying to
| separate proto-science or difficult science from non-science
| or pseudo-science, is in terms of open vs. closed systems.
|
| Do you mean the "open-world" vs. "closed-world" assumptions?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_world_assumption
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-world_assumption
|
| > Sociology and psychology do make predictions...
|
| Like what? I don't mean to sound rude or combative, I really
| want to know what you're thinking of here.
|
| FWIW if economics, sociology and psychology were classified
| as "non-sciences like painting or rhetoric" I would retire my
| objections. I don't think the problem is that these are pre-
| scientific fields that will become more predictive, I think
| it is that they have been derailed from the (natural?)
| progression of scientific knowledge from descriptive to
| ordering to predictive (e.g. like alchemy becoming
| chemistry.)
| morelisp wrote:
| > Do you mean the "open-world" vs. "closed-world"
| assumptions?
|
| No, I don't mean anything so formal. We're humans talking
| about human activity, not proof systems.
|
| I'm not discussing further since you seem to believe
| psychology has never made a correct prediction. There's
| entire areas of the brain named after psychologists who
| correctly identified their function. Pavlov's dogs are a
| western cultural touchstone.
|
| > derailed from the (natural?) progression of scientific
| knowledge
|
| How can you make any claim to define science with such
| utter teleological nonsense?
| carapace wrote:
| > No, I don't mean anything so formal.
|
| I just didn't understand what you meant. I still don't.
|
| > We're humans talking about human activity, not proof
| systems.
|
| Are you saying that we're talking about something other
| than proof systems, or are you saying that "we ourselves
| are not proof systems"? Either way I don't understand.
| Are you saying that formal logic isn't useful for
| reasoning about "human activity"?
|
| > I'm not discussing further
|
| Ah, well, nevermind then.
|
| Seriously though, I didn't mean to derail conversation, I
| was and still am genuinely interested in what you were
| saying. I can be pretty slow on the uptake sometimes, so
| please don't take my lack of understanding as criticism
| of you or what you were saying.
|
| > you seem to believe psychology has never made a correct
| prediction.
|
| I never said that nor would I. The word "psychology" has
| a broad range, everything from Freud and Jung to the
| molecular biology of nerves and neurons, from philosophy
| to quantum physics. Painting and rhetoric could even be
| considered to come under the rubric of human psychology.
| I have my own beliefs about various aspects and
| components of (some) of all that, but I'm asking you
| about yours.
|
| > There's entire areas of the brain named after
| psychologists who correctly identified their function.
|
| Okay, sure, structural neurology has advanced by leaps
| and bounds (since the bad old days of phrenology) and
| often informs things like surgical interventions, so
| that's a kind of scientific knowledge and predictive
| power. We have leaned much about the anatomy of the brain
| and how that in turn affect what could be called the
| anatomy of the mind. I could quibble that that's still
| pretty close to chemistry and biology which are inside my
| definition of science, or that it's seldom used to affect
| political policy, but I'm reminded of the epic battle in
| re: lead in fuel.
|
| > Pavlov's dogs are a western cultural touchstone.
|
| I don't really know how to respond to this. God save us
| from policy decided on the basis of Pavlovian psychology?
|
| > > derailed from the (natural?) progression of
| scientific knowledge
|
| > How can you make any claim to define science with such
| utter teleological nonsense?
|
| Why do you call that "teleological nonsense"?
|
| I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that science
| generally starts with _describing_ natural phenomenon,
| until a large body of reliable facts has accumulated,
| then a phase of _ordering_ sets in, where the relations
| between elements are sussed out, which leads to
| _prediction_ when we know the elements of a system and
| the rules they obey, and we can predict their behavior
| and so open the way to engineer new systems (aka
| "technology"). That's what I meant by the "progression of
| scientific knowledge". I added the "(natural?)" part
| because to me that's a interesting and open question. Is
| there a _natural_ progression to what is, after all, the
| most artificial of human activities?
| cycomanic wrote:
| I generally agree with you that all science should be
| testable, i.e. it should give us tell us things that we did
| not know, but can then test. However, I don't agree that
| you can easily extrapolate from that to saying these fields
| are science and these are not. Psychology, economics etc.
| do make predictions and many have been tested.
|
| To give you one example of predictions in psychology:
| Pavlov made very clear (and accurate) predictions about
| what is going to happen to his dog after "training" it.
|
| On the other hand there are areas in the "hard science",
| for example physics that have been going for long time,
| without making any predictions that are testable. String
| theory is the canonical example here.
|
| So saying only the "hard sciences" are "real sciences" is
| just repeating the trope that is very popular in
| engineering cycles (in my experience much less so amongst
| physicists or chemist). It doesn't make it true. Also it's
| very difficult to say what you mean by predictions. For
| example complex systems theory can make accurate
| predictions about general behavior of a system, but can't
| predict
| verisimi wrote:
| 'History of science' sounds like the attempt to frame acceptable
| scientific discussion.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >It may seem like there is more fringe thinking now because it is
| unfolding on your laptop screen, whereas previously it was easy
| to overlook the scribbled notebooks in your cousin's neighbor's
| basement that were thrown out when he passed away.
|
| Hey wait a minute, I still want to look at truly scientific
| notebooks before they get thrown out.
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