In the absence of any more information than that you “fail to discern [my] point”, I don’t know what I can usefully say to help. In ascending order of cynicism:
If nothing in my previous comment conveyed any meaning to you at all, then it seems like we have a big impedance mismatch and fixing the problem (whatever it is) seems likely to be more trouble than it’s worth.
If you just can’t be bothered to say with any specificity what the problem is, then I suppose that indicates that you think your time is much more valuable than mine, a position I cordially decline to share.
If you’re just being generally dismissive because that’s rhetorically more effective than engagement, I’m not interested in discussion on those terms.
(I’m sorry if you find my style uncongenially cautious. This deep into a tangential discussion like this one, I’d expect much of what’s said to be clarifications and edge-nibbling, and in particular it seems peculiar to (1) ask questions of the form “what do you mean by X and why is it better than Y?” and then (2) complain that you’re getting clarification and edge-nibbling in response.)
I mean it literally. I can’t see a coherent position behind your criticisms, there is no overarching framework which backs them up. I don’t understand what is the core of your disagreement amongst all the clarifications.
I don’t know that my disagreement has a single core. It looks to me as if you are making a number of separate (but related) mistakes.
I think you are defining “science” narrowly, to include only actual experimentation and analysis, then interpreting MattG’s comments as if he is using a similarly narrow definition of “science” (which he has said he isn’t). This is a mistake because of course what someone says is liable to come out wrong when you give its words different meanings from the one they had in mind.
I think you are defining “science” narrowly, to include only actual experimentation and analysis, in a discussion of whether knowledge would advance more effectively if scientists explicitly represented their beliefs about scientific theories in probabilistic terms, did something like Bayes-rule updates on learning new things, and attempted to monitor the reliability of other scientists using notions like “calibration”. This is a mistake because the question at issue is not about actual experimentation and analysis.
I think you are writing as if the only important things scientists do in their capacity as scientists are actual experimentation and analysis. This is a mistake because science is in fact a collective endeavour whose success in advancing knowledge depends on scientists’ communication with other scientists, and evaluation of their work.
Perhaps this is the core: I do not think that, in this discussion, it is helpful for you to insist on a narrow definition of what counts as “science”. I think your suggestion upthread that the only alternative is to say that absolutely anything is “science” is ridiculous. I don’t have any objection to a narrow definition of “science” as such; there are surely contexts in which it’s better than a broad one; but I don’t think this discussion is such a context.
Perhaps this is the core: I do not think that, in this discussion, it is helpful for you to insist on a narrow definition of what counts as “science”
Interesting. I don’t perceive this subthread as mostly about definitions, I think of it as being about the balance between two approaches to claims about reality: the hard one (“show me”, see also this) and the soft one (“let’s construct as subjective probability assessment on the basis of opinions of experts”).
Notably, this subthread started with MattG saying “Science moves forward through something called scientific consensus” and me going “Whaaaa...?”
I also don’t think the discussion is about definitions, but I think it’s being made needlessly more difficult by differences in definitions.
It is (I think) a simple matter of empirical fact that most of the time scientists get information from one another without saying “show me!”. That doesn’t mean that “show me!” isn’t always there in the background—it is—but only that the actual practice of science-broadly-conceived (by which I don’t mean “science-narrowly-conceived plus fake science”, I mean “science-narrowly-conceived plus the other things scientists do without which science as a whole would make much less progress”) does in fact involve subjective probability assessments on the basis of experts’ opinions.
It is (I think) a simple matter of empirical fact that most of the time scientists get information from one another without saying “show me!”.
Actually, I will disagree with that. There is a reason published papers consist mostly of detailed descriptions of what was done and what happened. If what you are saying were true, executive summaries would suffice: We have discovered that frobnicating frotzed blivets leads to emission of magic smoke. The End.
Certainly, large parts of scientific knowledge have passed into the “just accept it’s true” realm, but any new claims are required to be supported by fairly large amounts of “show me”.
If what you are saying were true, executive summaries would suffice
I don’t see why. The details are there for the following reasons, none of which appears to me to be invalidated by anything I’ve said. (1) They are interesting for their own sake (to those immersed in the field, at least). (2) They clarify what useful opportunities there may be for followup work (“Hmm, all their blivets were frotzed with titanium chloride. What happens if we use uranium nitride instead?”). (3) They provide a way to do “show me!”-like checks for those relatively few who want to without needing to interrogate the authors (replicating the analysis is easier than replicating the experiment). (4) They provide, in principle, the information needed for a more thorough “show me!” check (outright replication) for those even fewer who want to do that.
If you’ve got the impression that I don’t agree that independent experimental test is the nearest thing we have to an ultimate arbiter of scientific truth, then I’ve been unclear or you’ve been obtuse or both; I do agree with that. Most of the time, though, scientists don’t go all the way to the ultimate arbiter.
In the absence of any more information than that you “fail to discern [my] point”, I don’t know what I can usefully say to help. In ascending order of cynicism:
If nothing in my previous comment conveyed any meaning to you at all, then it seems like we have a big impedance mismatch and fixing the problem (whatever it is) seems likely to be more trouble than it’s worth.
If you just can’t be bothered to say with any specificity what the problem is, then I suppose that indicates that you think your time is much more valuable than mine, a position I cordially decline to share.
If you’re just being generally dismissive because that’s rhetorically more effective than engagement, I’m not interested in discussion on those terms.
(I’m sorry if you find my style uncongenially cautious. This deep into a tangential discussion like this one, I’d expect much of what’s said to be clarifications and edge-nibbling, and in particular it seems peculiar to (1) ask questions of the form “what do you mean by X and why is it better than Y?” and then (2) complain that you’re getting clarification and edge-nibbling in response.)
I mean it literally. I can’t see a coherent position behind your criticisms, there is no overarching framework which backs them up. I don’t understand what is the core of your disagreement amongst all the clarifications.
I don’t know that my disagreement has a single core. It looks to me as if you are making a number of separate (but related) mistakes.
I think you are defining “science” narrowly, to include only actual experimentation and analysis, then interpreting MattG’s comments as if he is using a similarly narrow definition of “science” (which he has said he isn’t). This is a mistake because of course what someone says is liable to come out wrong when you give its words different meanings from the one they had in mind.
I think you are defining “science” narrowly, to include only actual experimentation and analysis, in a discussion of whether knowledge would advance more effectively if scientists explicitly represented their beliefs about scientific theories in probabilistic terms, did something like Bayes-rule updates on learning new things, and attempted to monitor the reliability of other scientists using notions like “calibration”. This is a mistake because the question at issue is not about actual experimentation and analysis.
I think you are writing as if the only important things scientists do in their capacity as scientists are actual experimentation and analysis. This is a mistake because science is in fact a collective endeavour whose success in advancing knowledge depends on scientists’ communication with other scientists, and evaluation of their work.
Perhaps this is the core: I do not think that, in this discussion, it is helpful for you to insist on a narrow definition of what counts as “science”. I think your suggestion upthread that the only alternative is to say that absolutely anything is “science” is ridiculous. I don’t have any objection to a narrow definition of “science” as such; there are surely contexts in which it’s better than a broad one; but I don’t think this discussion is such a context.
Interesting. I don’t perceive this subthread as mostly about definitions, I think of it as being about the balance between two approaches to claims about reality: the hard one (“show me”, see also this) and the soft one (“let’s construct as subjective probability assessment on the basis of opinions of experts”).
Notably, this subthread started with MattG saying “Science moves forward through something called scientific consensus” and me going “Whaaaa...?”
I also don’t think the discussion is about definitions, but I think it’s being made needlessly more difficult by differences in definitions.
It is (I think) a simple matter of empirical fact that most of the time scientists get information from one another without saying “show me!”. That doesn’t mean that “show me!” isn’t always there in the background—it is—but only that the actual practice of science-broadly-conceived (by which I don’t mean “science-narrowly-conceived plus fake science”, I mean “science-narrowly-conceived plus the other things scientists do without which science as a whole would make much less progress”) does in fact involve subjective probability assessments on the basis of experts’ opinions.
Actually, I will disagree with that. There is a reason published papers consist mostly of detailed descriptions of what was done and what happened. If what you are saying were true, executive summaries would suffice: We have discovered that frobnicating frotzed blivets leads to emission of magic smoke. The End.
Certainly, large parts of scientific knowledge have passed into the “just accept it’s true” realm, but any new claims are required to be supported by fairly large amounts of “show me”.
I don’t see why. The details are there for the following reasons, none of which appears to me to be invalidated by anything I’ve said. (1) They are interesting for their own sake (to those immersed in the field, at least). (2) They clarify what useful opportunities there may be for followup work (“Hmm, all their blivets were frotzed with titanium chloride. What happens if we use uranium nitride instead?”). (3) They provide a way to do “show me!”-like checks for those relatively few who want to without needing to interrogate the authors (replicating the analysis is easier than replicating the experiment). (4) They provide, in principle, the information needed for a more thorough “show me!” check (outright replication) for those even fewer who want to do that.
If you’ve got the impression that I don’t agree that independent experimental test is the nearest thing we have to an ultimate arbiter of scientific truth, then I’ve been unclear or you’ve been obtuse or both; I do agree with that. Most of the time, though, scientists don’t go all the way to the ultimate arbiter.