That doesn’t quite work: how would you keep that ratio low ? In practice, the only way is by countering social influences which might lead a scientist astray with other social influences. The total amount of “social” stays roughly the same.
Well, depends if you want to define “desire to find truth” as a social force. A scientist motivated by a desire to find the truth is a better scientist and more likely to get an accurate result than a scientist motivated by a desire to confirm the tenets of zir religion or political system, or to fit in, or to get a promotion, or to get home early, or any of those other social forces.
The stronger the motivation to find the truth, the less we would expect other, more traditionally “social” forces to influence a scientist, and the more likely that the scientist’s results would be accurate.
Because the direction of the motivation to find truth varies along with the evidence, seems fair to say the scientist motivated primarily by truth-seeking is influenced by the evidence and not by the social situation ze’s in.
There may not be any human motivated entirely by truth seeking (except of course Eliezer pbuh), but some people are more than others, and that makes those scientists better.
Well, depends if you want to define “desire to find truth” as a social force.
For the purposes of this conversation, we are using “social” as a shorthand for any influence on the scientist’s behaviour that isn’t linked (through a verifiable publication trail) to the effect under study. That does include “desire to find truth”, if the object of study is (say) the cosmic microwave background.
The stronger the motivation to find the truth, the less we would expect other, more traditionally “social” forces to influence a scientist, and the more likely that the scientist’s results would be accurate.
Do we now ? Some motivation to advance your own career will definitely be required in very competitive fields. (See Latour’s interview with Pierre Kernowicz, “Portrait of a Biologist as Wild Capitalist”.) Given the high degree of specialization in science today, how much do you expect “desire to find truth” to resist to a realization that you don’t, after all, care that much about molecular biology ? Science is a job, and we may expect people motivated by “traditional” social forces such as keeping their boss happy, making promotion, tenure or whatever, and so on will contribute to getting accurate results.
We have demonstrable evidence that working scientists are required to submit to certain non-truth-related conventions in order to be permitted to carry out science. You have to write papers in a form acceptable to journal editors, you have to work on subjects acceptable to your thesis advisor to get your PhD, and so on, and if you refuse to comply with this kind of requirements you may well be able to do science of some kind, in spare time left over from your day job, but certainly not, say, experimental physics.
What gets you accurate results in experimental physics isn’t “desire to find truth”, it is a particle accelerator.
Well, depends if you want to define “desire to find truth” as a social force. A scientist motivated by a desire to find the truth is a better scientist and more likely to get an accurate result than a scientist motivated by a desire to confirm the tenets of zir religion or political system, or to fit in, or to get a promotion, or to get home early, or any of those other social forces.
The stronger the motivation to find the truth, the less we would expect other, more traditionally “social” forces to influence a scientist, and the more likely that the scientist’s results would be accurate.
Because the direction of the motivation to find truth varies along with the evidence, seems fair to say the scientist motivated primarily by truth-seeking is influenced by the evidence and not by the social situation ze’s in.
There may not be any human motivated entirely by truth seeking (except of course Eliezer pbuh), but some people are more than others, and that makes those scientists better.
For the purposes of this conversation, we are using “social” as a shorthand for any influence on the scientist’s behaviour that isn’t linked (through a verifiable publication trail) to the effect under study. That does include “desire to find truth”, if the object of study is (say) the cosmic microwave background.
Do we now ? Some motivation to advance your own career will definitely be required in very competitive fields. (See Latour’s interview with Pierre Kernowicz, “Portrait of a Biologist as Wild Capitalist”.) Given the high degree of specialization in science today, how much do you expect “desire to find truth” to resist to a realization that you don’t, after all, care that much about molecular biology ? Science is a job, and we may expect people motivated by “traditional” social forces such as keeping their boss happy, making promotion, tenure or whatever, and so on will contribute to getting accurate results.
We have demonstrable evidence that working scientists are required to submit to certain non-truth-related conventions in order to be permitted to carry out science. You have to write papers in a form acceptable to journal editors, you have to work on subjects acceptable to your thesis advisor to get your PhD, and so on, and if you refuse to comply with this kind of requirements you may well be able to do science of some kind, in spare time left over from your day job, but certainly not, say, experimental physics.
What gets you accurate results in experimental physics isn’t “desire to find truth”, it is a particle accelerator.