Like, any explanation of the form “psychology is harder for reason X, so physics had more impressive work earlier on, which drew in smarter people...” feels like a just-so story; it seems at least as plausible that more competent people will be drawn to more difficult problems. (Note that both the hypotheses put forward in the OP are of this form, so this is also a response to the OP.)
Thanks, John. I want to clarify how our hypotheses differ from the “just-so story” pattern you described.
Our hypotheses don’t claim “psychology is harder for reason X, which led to physics attracting smarter people.” Rather, we propose structural factors that may contribute to the *perception* of different disciplines’ difficulty, independent of the researchers’ capabilities.
I share your skepticism of just-so stories, which typically:
Highlight compatibility between evidence and a hypothesis
Fail to consider alternative explanations
Don’t generate novel, testable predictions
Often lack explicit calibration about confidence
We’ve tried to avoid these pitfalls in several ways:
First, we’re explicit about our confidence levels. We present these as partial explanations among many factors that likely contribute to perceived disciplinary difficulty, not as comprehensive accounts.
Second, our hypotheses can generate testable predictions. For example:
The Rigid Demands hypothesis makes it more likely that self-reported pre-commitment to specific questions should correlate with lower R² values across fields
The Fruit in the Hand hypothesis makes it more likely that the something like the Kolmogorov complexity of algorithms that solve “impressive” tasks in evolved social domains (like facial recognition) should be greater than those for non-evolved physical domains (like calculating rocket trajectories)
Third, we’ve formalized our reasoning mathematically, which helps expose assumptions and clarify the scope of our claims.
Clearly, these are speculative conjectures regarding very hard questions. That said, we think our formal approach can help move us toward more structured hypotheses about a fascinating question—something we hope is marginally better than just-so stories. :)
Thanks, John. I want to clarify how our hypotheses differ from the “just-so story” pattern you described.
Our hypotheses don’t claim “psychology is harder for reason X, which led to physics attracting smarter people.” Rather, we propose structural factors that may contribute to the *perception* of different disciplines’ difficulty, independent of the researchers’ capabilities.
I share your skepticism of just-so stories, which typically:
Highlight compatibility between evidence and a hypothesis
Fail to consider alternative explanations
Don’t generate novel, testable predictions
Often lack explicit calibration about confidence
We’ve tried to avoid these pitfalls in several ways:
First, we’re explicit about our confidence levels. We present these as partial explanations among many factors that likely contribute to perceived disciplinary difficulty, not as comprehensive accounts.
Second, our hypotheses can generate testable predictions. For example:
The Rigid Demands hypothesis makes it more likely that self-reported pre-commitment to specific questions should correlate with lower R² values across fields
The Fruit in the Hand hypothesis makes it more likely that the something like the Kolmogorov complexity of algorithms that solve “impressive” tasks in evolved social domains (like facial recognition) should be greater than those for non-evolved physical domains (like calculating rocket trajectories)
Third, we’ve formalized our reasoning mathematically, which helps expose assumptions and clarify the scope of our claims.
Clearly, these are speculative conjectures regarding very hard questions. That said, we think our formal approach can help move us toward more structured hypotheses about a fascinating question—something we hope is marginally better than just-so stories. :)